Despised Films You're Happy To Defend

[Nobody Soup]

Pirates of the Caribbean

I don't know if it's despised, it's obviously massively commercially succesful but I searched it on here and found plenty of people panning it as a kids film and saying johnny depp was annoying, but you know what, fuck you. I just think it's a hugely entertaining film, the kind you want to sit about watching on christmas day I think it's great. Johnny Depp is brilliant in it, a han solo fuck up, and he looks amazing. it's got the right amount of acts and plot twists to make it feel epic, funny light hearted moments (for some reason I particularly like Kevin McNally's character - "he's a mute, sir.") not even orlando blook and keira knightly being awful in every single film they're in could drag it down.

[xxxx xxx x xxx]

Sliding Doors, Notting Hill, and that sort of chick-flickiness in general.  Great for soothing away hangovers on a Sunday afternoon.

[Thomas]

Just to go back to Titanic, I discovered the other day that my favourite line of the film -

I'd rather be his whore than your wife.

- which I'd felt redeemed the rest of James Cameron's dialogue, was lifted directly from an episode Twin Peaks.[nb]an episode starring Billy Zane, in fact.[/nb]

[checkoutgirl]

Saturday Night Fever gets a bad rap because of the parodies, dated music and fashion, and the fact that a lot of people have only seen the PG version, but the original 18-cert version is actually a very gritty, brutal (the gang rape scene springs to mind) time capsule of NYC/disco culture in the 70s, and John Travolta is brilliant in it.

I think Saturday Night Fever is a decent film and the only people who would slag it off wouldn't have seen it. I was a bit surprised at the social commentary in it.

[Old Nehamkin]

Just to go back to Titanic, I discovered the other day that my favourite line of the film -

- which I'd felt redeemed the rest of James Cameron's dialogue, was lifted directly from an episode Twin Peaks.[nb]an episode starring Billy Zane, in fact.[/nb]

A shit episode of Twin Peaks starring Billy Zane, in fact.

[Cerys]

I like Titanic - although I have to mentally separate in into two films.  The love story can fuck off.

I think Alien 3 is surprisingly great. The CGI is terrible and would have looked terrible back when it first came out.

You know that the xenomorph isn't CG, right?

[kngen]

The original studio cut of Blade Runner - yes, I know the subsequent iterations are far superior artistically, but I watched the original pretty much every weekend for about two years as a teen, so I always feel a bit cheated when I don't get a happy ending or 'Sushi. That's what my ex-wife called me ... cold fish.'

[QDRPHNC]

Cannonball Run. We have:

- Burt Reynold's moustache in its heyday.
- Dom DeLuise just being generally funny (the highlight being his delivery of, "and you know that.")
- Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr as drunk womanizing priests in a Ferrari ("Thank you, asshole.)
- Jack Elam injecting himself with sedatives and patting his proctological-exam finger under Reynold's nose.
- Roger Moore as a man who thinks he's Roger Moore playing James Bond ("... it's ok darling, you just stay close to Moore.")
- Adrienne Barbeau in a Lamborghini.
- Peter Fonda!
- Big karate fight with Jackie Chan in his first Hollywood role.
- Jamie Farr being a bit racist.

It's funny and fast paced and fun. 31% on RT? Fuck them.

[Puce Moment]

John Carter

I thought it was good fun and just about every kid I know likes it a lot. I managed to get through the whole film, unlike most of the other man-child baiting superhero shite cacked onto my face in the last three summers.

[lazarou]

John Carter was a decent film that had a staggering run of bad luck mixed with the worst possible timing. Someone could write a book about the perfect storm of fuckups surrounding that one, so it's just as well they did. Even if you weren't a fan, that's probably still worth a read for some great insight into the special kind of nightmare Hollywood can be.

[PAGATRON]

Wow was it that bad that there's a book about it? I actually like the film too, I read somewhere that Disney is keen to do a sequel.

[Serge]

Cannonball Run. We have:

- Burt Reynold's moustache in its heyday.
- Dom DeLuise just being generally funny (the highlight being his delivery of, "and you know that.")
- Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr as drunk womanizing priests in a Ferrari ("Thank you, asshole.)
- Jack Elam injecting himself with sedatives and patting his proctological-exam finger under Reynold's nose.
- Roger Moore as a man who thinks he's Roger Moore playing James Bond ("... it's ok darling, you just stay close to Moore.")
- Adrienne Barbeau in a Lamborghini.
- Peter Fonda!
- Big karate fight with Jackie Chan in his first Hollywood role.
- Jamie Farr being a bit racist.

It's funny and fast paced and fun. 31% on RT? Fuck them.

Not to mention 'These Rosary bleeds?'

[Kane Jones]

Wait a moment; who the fuck despises The Cannonball Run? I'll hit them in the jaw with a big old wrench.

[batwings]

Cannonball Run. We have:

- Burt Reynold's moustache in its heyday.
- Dom DeLuise just being generally funny (the highlight being his delivery of, "and you know that.")
- Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr as drunk womanizing priests in a Ferrari ("Thank you, asshole.)
- Jack Elam injecting himself with sedatives and patting his proctological-exam finger under Reynold's nose.
- Roger Moore as a man who thinks he's Roger Moore playing James Bond ("... it's ok darling, you just stay close to Moore.")
- Adrienne Barbeau in a Lamborghini.
- Peter Fonda!
- Big karate fight with Jackie Chan in his first Hollywood role.
- Jamie Farr being a bit racist.

It's funny and fast paced and fun. 31% on RT? Fuck them.

I fucking love Cannonball Run.

[Steven]

Ok' I'll say it: The Cable Guy

Always liked it from seeing it on release and never understood the box-office failure as Carrey's first doozy and constant ribbing it got. Liar Liar was much worse. It was a turn for Carrey to play something funny but slightly darker, a parody of the Max Cady type. From what I understand it was originally very similar to a light What About Bob affair, until Judd Apatow was drafted in to help re-write it with ideas from Ben Stiller and Carrey and it became a darker film, and a lot of the darker stuff was removed on behest of the studio, maybe this schizophrenia of tone made the film turn out less successful? Apatow wasn't allowed to direct so they got Ben Stiller, I always thought the Chip Douglas character could have easily been played by Stiller and this is probably what Stiller wanted when he came onto the project but Carrey was such a big draw at the time the studio managed to secure him instead. 

That scene where he's karaokeing Somebody To Love still brings back the feeling I had in the cinema first seeing it, that this is some weird kind of clusterfuck in a good way.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The Cannonball Run is great fun. Who knows what idiots are involved in film review scoring if that one fares badly.

[Stone Cold Jane Austen]

Apparently none other than Alfred Hitchcock himself was a fan of Cannonball Run so if that's not a ringing endorsement then I don't know what is.

[Bored of Canada]

You know that the xenomorph isn't CG, right?

It is though? When it's practical in camera effects with puppets or people in suit, it looks great. All those running scenes look bad because it barely even matches the environment it's running through.
Alien³: Every Xenomorph scene: http://youtu.be/KFm4gscgg_0

Cable Guy I remember being great. And I've been meaning to watch John Carter for a while as a few friends I trust have seen it and said it's actually really good fun. I think the response to it was fairly typical of people these days. Giving a shit about the box office stuff and gleefully putting the boot into something when they reckon it's going to be crap and it flops tremendously. Who really gives a shit about the budget or if it does well? They've made a film and money is irrelevant if it's good.

[Puce Moment]

I remember when Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was released and the critics were especially sharp about what they saw as the failing careers of Michael Caine and Steve Martin. I find it one of the most wildly entertaining and hilarious mainstream film of the 90s - the raising stakes and one-upmanship is great. It's hard for me to understand how anything so unashamedly fun and well crafted would have been put forward as an example of their careers in decline, most especially because of how much other shit they were both doing at the time.

For me it's like The Sting or Bedtime Story or Matchstick Men except much, much better.

[garbed_attic]

Saturday Night Fever gets a bad rap because of the parodies, dated music and fashion, and the fact that a lot of people have only seen the PG version, but the original 18-cert version is actually a very gritty, brutal (the gang rape scene springs to mind) time capsule of NYC/disco culture in the 70s, and John Travolta is brilliant in it.

Ebert agrees!

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-saturday-night-fever-1977

It wasn't despised exactly, but I rather liked the recent low-budget horror As Above, So Below ... mostly because it was like a Tomb Raider game, with hokey references to alchemy thrown in - which is something I can enjoy!

[AsparagusTrevor]

It is though? When it's practical in camera effects with puppets or people in suit, it looks great. All those running scenes look bad because it barely even matches the environment it's running through.

It's a small rod puppet badly composited onto the shot.  If I remember, the only bit of CGI in the film was the alien's head cracking.

[Wet Blanket]

I really loved Only God Forgives. It's just gloriously weird and horrible, and looks amazing - if Nicholas Winding Refn had brought that out before Drive it would be much more highly regarded, but everyone was disappointed that it wasn't another retro thriller and Ryan Gosling was playing a dweeb.

Everyone gets to enjoy one Adam Sandler movie, and mine's The Wedding Singer. All his other films make me want to vomit[nb]Punch Drunk Love is good too, but I don't count that as a proper Sandler film[/nb], but this one works for me, maybe because I have fond memories of seeing it as a teenager; it must have been one of the first 12-certificate films I saw at the cinema, which was a breakthrough back before they made it an advisory rating.

What didn't occur to me when it came out is that it's only set about ten years in the past. That's weird isn't it? Especially to make so many nostalgia jokes about it. Eighties pop culture really did vanish quickly; I can't imagine a 2014 film getting as much mileage out of 2004, or even 1994.

[Johnny Textface]

I really enjoyed Vanilla Sky (although I've still not seen the original). I saw it twice at the cinema and that doesn't happen too often. I think alot of people were put off by the slightly sci-fi aspect in the end. Cameron Crowe hasn't tried this hard since.

Another one I'll always speak of fondly is The Fountain. What an incredibly ambitious film. And the soundtrack is definitely one of my favourites of all time.

Rocky IV is so far removed from the original classic that it's almost parody - however as a piece of entertainment with a couple of beers and a takeaway - it's a good night in.

[Egyptian Feast]

Ok' I'll say it: The Cable Guy

I think this film would be much improved if they ended it five minutes earlier

Spoiler alert

when Jim Carrey's character attempts suicide and the screen cuts to black; the scene following it is hopelessly laboured, especially when one of the people whose TV has blacked out lifts up a book slowly and smiles as the music swells - talk about beating us over the head with the message! Of course it turns out Carrey isn't dead after all, which dilutes the impact of the scene on the satellite dish.

[close]

I think it's an underrated film, but it would have much more bite without the compromised ending.

[Shaky]

Caddyshack II - total shite, obviously, but also a great bunch of fun:

"Fonzanoon."
"I will refer to you as... Mrs. Esterhouse."
"That's hard to say, huh? Is it as hard to say as, 'Oh my god! Somebody help me! There's a man in my office with a flamethrower'?"

[checkoutgirl]

Cannonball Run.

That's my childhood there. Being in my cousin's house and watching something about loads of people racing around in various cars for some reason. Also Scavenger Hunt (1979) and Smokey and the Bandit (1977) are other prime examples. The late 1970s had a lot of that type of stuff.

[Blumf]

Rocky IV is so far removed from the original classic that it's almost parody - however as a piece of entertainment with a couple of beers and a takeaway - it's a good night in.

Speaking of which, I think the original Rocky and Rambo films are probably fit for this thread. They're not quiet as dumb as a lot of people seem to think, not high art, but they are worth a watch.

[Johnny Textface]

Surely no one despises Rocky and First Blood! They are both great pieces of cinema.

[Blumf]

You get a lot of people who never seen them and think they're both big dumb 80s action flicks and won't budge from that view. Had to explain it a few times, so I think they count.

[billtheburger]

Live & Let Die
Even the sheriff & theme tune.