Uh-oh, it’s another blog post commenting on somebody else’s arbitrary list of movies that share a particular subjective designation. Specifically, we’re talking about Premiere magazine’s 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time. Naturally, I disagree with a number of the selections. I’ll save you the discomfort of exeriencing the interface at the end of that Premiere link — it’s one of those sucky click-through-one-at-a-time pop-up dealies, rather than a straightforward page of text — by running down the the list here:

20. American Beauty
19. Chicago
18. Clerks
17. Fantasia
16. Field of Dreams
15. Chariots of Fire
14. Good Will Hunting
13. Forrest Gump
12. Jules and Jim
11. A Beautiful Mind
10. Monster’s Ball
9. Moonstruck
8. Mystic River
7. Nashville
6. The Wizard of Oz
5. An American in Paris
4. Easy Rider
3. The Red Shoes
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
1. Gone with the Wind

For the record, I completely disagree with about half the titles on this list. I liked American Beauty, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, and Mystic River; they may not be all they were made out to be by the almighty hype machine, and only time will tell if their reputations endure, but calling them “the most overrated of all time” is unfair and smacks of a petty backlash against their Oscar success. Fantasia and 2001 must be respected as influential landmarks and interesting experiments. I can take or leave The Wizard of Oz, although I have very pleasant childhood memories of watching the annual TV broadcast of this one with my mom. And you do not want to go dissing Field of Dreams around me. I love that movie; it’s rare that modern filmmakers are willing to wear their hearts on their sleeves and make a movie that’s unambiguously optimistic and genuinely heartwarming. Anyone who complains about this one is being willfully churlish. Either that, or they never had a dad.

As for the remainder of the list, I must confess that there are several titles that I’ve never seen: Chariots of Fire, Jules and Jim, Monster’s Ball, Nashville, An American in Paris, and The Red Shoes have all eluded me, and it’s been so long since I saw Moonstruck that I feel unqualified to say much.

The last few titles that I’ve not mentioned, however — Clerks, Good Will Hunting, Forrest Gump, Easy Rider, and Gone with the Wind — definitely fit my definition of “overrated.” The popularity of Kevin Smith’s juvenile, offensive, and amateurish work baffles me; Good Will Hunting never struck me as anything special; Forrest Gump offends my intellect (what the hell is the movie saying, that everything will turn out fine so long as you never think?); and Easy Rider is badly dated and probably only works if you’re stoned, a definite case of “you had to be there.”

As for Gone with the Wind… hoo boy, talk about a let-down. All my life, it seemed, I’d heard about what a wonder that movie was, how significant it was in film history, how successful, the Star Wars of its day, the supreme Hollywood entertainment. When I was about 19 and a very serious-minded student of cinema, I heard it was going to play at the old Avalon Theater in Murray (which then served as the Salt Lake area’s local revival house). I could hardly contain my excitement. I rounded up my girlfriend of the time and headed on down there, anticipating a wonderful night of seeing a classic on the big screen in a vintage theater, with my girl at my side and romance in the air. I felt as if I were achieving some kind of lifetime goal.

The first half of the movie was pretty good, but then something happened… it veered off into the realm of soap opera. And it wasn’t even good soap opera. All these people started dying contrived deaths. I was bored. And I was impossibly annoyed with Scarlet O’Hara, surely the most obnoxious, superficial, bitchy female ever to grace the silver screen. I will never understand why so many people, so many women, find her an admirable character. Rhett Butler’s rejection of her at the film’s end didn’t begin to provide enough catharsis for the deep frustration I felt toward her. Gone with the Wind wasn’t my first experience with disillusion, but it was a big one.

Getting back to this list thing, I, of course, have a few nominees of my own for the “most overrated” title. I initially agreed with Scalzi (from whom I swiped this subject) that the list concentrates too much on recent stuff — by my count, eight of the 20 titles were made in the last 10 or 15 years — but looking over my own choices, I see that they, also, are mostly recent. Maybe there’s just something about the way movies are hyped these days that inevitably leads to disappointment and backlash? Or maybe it’s because the older films that we see these days have stood the test of time, and the overhyped films from the old days have fallen into well-deserved obscurity?

I don’t know. In any event, here are my own additions to the list of the Most Overrated Movies of All Time:

• Chasing Amy — Another Kevin Smith film, and not coincidentally the last of his that I bothered myself to see. I think it was the 20-minute conversation about cunnilingus that ultimately did me in. Not that I’m opposed to such conversations in principle, but I’d kind of like them to actually, you know, amount to something, instead of just being an experiment to see how many times an actor can say the word “pussy” is a single film.
• Pulp Fiction — Disgustingly amoral, gimmicky, and the inspiration for a whole lot of crappy imitators. I didn’t find the non-linear story construction fascinating so much as annoying, and Quentin Tarentino’s obnoxiously fat head in interviews didn’t help with my opinion of his work.
• Annie Hall — The movie that bested Star Wars for the Best Film Oscar in 1977 has not aged well, but I find it hard to imagine that anyone ever found it all that funny or thought-provoking. But then I pretty much feel that way about all the films of Woody Allen. Like Kevin Smith, I totally don’t get his popularity.
• The English Patient — Pretty to look at, but so, so, so very boring and pointless. It ain’t subtlety, folks, it’s emptiness, emotional bankruptcy…
• Taxi Driver — In general, I’m a big Martin Scorsese fan but I have to be honest: I don’t get this one, considered by many to be his masterpiece. Like Pulp Fiction, it’s essentially just a tour through the most squalid nether regions of modern urban life with some ultra-violence thrown in for kicks, but in the end, if there was any point being made, I missed it.
• Adaptation/Being John Malkovich — I debated listing these two movies separately, but decided that my issue with them is the same in both cases, and they were both written and directed by the same guys, so in a way, they’re the same movie. My issue is this: they’re weird. They’re weird for no good reason other than to be weird. I didn’t find their weirdness quirky, charming, or stimulating, it’s just simply… weird. Weird like an off-his-meds homeless guy mumbling weird, inscrutable and a little bit threatening. These two films are everything I hate about post-modernistic writing: the gimmick takes precendence over the the message, assuming there even is a message, and if you’re not entertained, then, the movie seems to suggest, it’s your fault because you’re just not sophisticated enough to get it. To which I say, what’s to get? The Emperor is walking around naked…
• The Great Dictator — I love Charlie Chaplin movies. All of them. Except this one, the one where he famously plays a Hitler look-a-like who bats around an inflatable globe. This is one of the few movies that I’ve ever walked out on. It was that boring, that unfunny, that downright painful. I felt guilty leaving the theater, like I was forfeiting my right to call myself a movie buff and amateur film historian, but I just couldn’t take any more. I suspect this movie is respected only because it was made by Chaplin, and because he was willing to engage satirize Hitler when half the country still liked the little creep and the other half didn’t dare speak up. That is admirable, I suppose. But the movie itself is a real snooze…
  And last but not least:
• Napoleon Dynamite — I don’t know how this movie performed in other parts of the country, but it was huge here in Utah, and the fact that it was filmed right across the border in Preston, Idaho, by guys from our very own Brigham Young University doesn’t quite explain why. Something about this supremely stupid movie resonates with my friends and neighbors, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is. The Girlfriend and I both suffered through this thing with our mouths hanging open in disbelief. It’s like a bad practical joke. I’ve had more than one fan of this one tell me that I’ve got watch it again, because it starts to get funny on the second viewing, but these same people can’t explain to me why I should give up another hour and a half of my life to the soul-devouring, mind-deadening evil that’s already claimed 90 of my lifetime’s precious minutes. Hell, I’d rather sit through any Ed Wood film than see this dreck again…