Films that disappoint on viewing again

[TheMonk]

I just sat down and excitedly forced my kids to watch Labyrinth.

They were entirely bored and so was I. Slow pace, not a great deal of note happens.
Bowie's performance is pantomime level. The music all sounds like it's made on a cheap toy keyboard.
Feeling flat now.

Any films you used to like where you've had a similar experience?

[Old Nehamkin]

I recently watched Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls for the first time since I was about 11 and it sadly wasn't quite the non-stop laugh riot I remembered it being. The parts I recalled as being funny were still funny, and the rhino scene is obviously one of the best things in all of comedy, but those moments are punctuated by a lot of very weak, bloated set pieces and I'm sorry to say that there were points when Carrey's schtick became a little bit exhausting.

Still way better than the first one, though.

[SavageHedgehog]

The Mask is a film I loved as a kid, I don't think it's a bad film per say but revisiting it in my late teens I found it kind of empty and bland, and that has been my overriding impression whenever I've caught bits of it since.

(Coincidentally I was writing this before I saw the post about Ace 2 which I still love)

[Old Nehamkin]

To be honest, even while I was writing that post about Ace Ventura 2 I found myself fondly reminiscing about all the jokes I do love in it. I think I'd probably have done better justice to the film as it existed in my memory by just getting drunk and watching a bunch of clips on youtube rather than actually sitting down and viewing the whole thing start to finish.

[shagatha crustie]

I just sat down and excitedly forced my kids to watch Labyrinth.

They were entirely bored and so was I. Slow pace, not a great deal of note happens.
Bowie's performance is pantomime level. The music all sounds like it's made on a cheap toy keyboard.
Feeling flat now.

Couldn't agree more. I watched it again a few years ago and was taken aback by how overlong and unexciting it was. It holds up more as a pop culture reference than an actual film.

Also, American Beauty:

This film hurts my head. It's like a trick eye picture which fucks with your depth perception and makes it impossible to tell whether it's deep or shallow. It's an incomplete, paradoxical text that makes all the necessary thematic overtures toward saying something, but what they add up to is only coherent if you squint at a certain part of it; the more attention you try to pay to the whole picture, the more your reading is confounded. It's both smarter, and dumber, than people think. Is it The World Is Actually Beautiful but Oh No Fake Suburbia? Or just The World Is Beautiful Including Fake Suburbia? Both? Neither?

Writer Alan Ball is a gay man, and I've seen it argued that this film is ultimately a critique of heteronormativity (the gay couple are the only happy, well-adjusted, non-repressed people in the film, etc). That's a convincing enough argument to me, but one that the film itself seems to sabotage - why are we then continually being expected to identify with Lester's privileged straight male rock star wank fantasy and blame Bad Fake Suburbia for ever beating him down? Why do topless Thora Birch and Mena Suvari feel like straight-up cynical audience titillation?

Maybe some frustration comes from my personal history with the film. As a kid, when American Beauty came out, I remember feeling like it was everywhere; the giant sensuous poster looming wherever you turned ('look closer'), probably provoking early subconscious sexual stirrings. The music also suddenly seemed to be ubiquitous, from adverts on telly to my dad's chillout compilation CDs (and made an indelible mark on me - honestly, I still absolutely adore the soundtrack for this film, although Newman's work was blandified in similar Oscar-baiting fare throughout the '00s).

Then as a teenager, 14 or 15 or so, when I actually watched the film, I thought it was the deepest thing I'd ever seen. Oh man, yeah, 'this isn't life, this is just stuff!', that's a mantra to live by, why do we get jobs and live in Bad Fake Suburbia when we could be free to smoke weed, pursue eternal youth and have sex with whoever we want? The rosebush-trimmers, they're the real weirdos! Mom, next time you call me for dinner, don't expect me to reply, I'll be out in the street filming a plastic bag and feeling deep feelings about beauty that you'll never understand!

Suffice to say those feelings have diminished with every subsequent watch, and now I don't know quite what to think. Maybe the truth is that Hollywood realised that with this aesthetically striking, atmospheric end-of-history soap opera, it had a perfect zeitgeist-capturing film on its hands and dialled the marketing up to 11. The result? A defining Movie Moment for the end of a millennium and the beginning of the next, reflecting the midlife dissatisfaction of the boomers and the rebellious angst of Gen X enough that nobody was that interested in the cogency of the underlying message.

[Marner and Me]

Scary Movie 2. I guess it was piss weak when it came out, but to an 11 year old it was funny. Not so much now. When I see it as piss weak.

[mobias]

I just sat down and excitedly forced my kids to watch Labyrinth.

They were entirely bored and so was I. Slow pace, not a great deal of note happens.
Bowie's performance is pantomime level. The music all sounds like it's made on a cheap toy keyboard.
Feeling flat now.

Any films you used to like where you've had a similar experience?

I watched Labyrinth, or at least some of it, relatively recently and its very of its day but I still enjoyed it. I'm not surprised kids these days wouldn't get it. Editing back then was far slower and everything was much less in your face. Its so much more theatrical than anything you get these days. Incidentally they're finally making a sequel to it. I think Duncan Jones, Bowie's director son, has something to do with it.

[ProvanFan]

The Usual Suspects

[Famous Mortimer]

Midnight Run.

The improv seems weak, and it drags. Just not that into it.

[PlanktonSideburns]

alien 3 - loved it as a 20 yearold, seems embarrasing now

HEAT - nice shiny surfaces, sure - very nolan esque, but denerio is fucking SHITE in it, completley charmless, pachino not much better huffing about like a corpse thats been temporarily revived by being taxidermied with cocaine

[beanheadmcginty]

Oh shit. Someone's mentioned Alien 3. Another thread down the pan.

[kidsick5000]

The work of Kevin Smith.

Loved Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back when it came out.

A few years later. Cold stony silence.

[SavageHedgehog]

I was never the biggest fan, but his stuff does feel very wedded to the time when "geek culture" was ascendant, rather than triumphant.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Oh shit. Someone's mentioned Alien 3. Another thread down the pan.

oh fuck, I shouldn't have should I?

[rue the polywhirl]

Dark Crystal I think is a worse offender. I don't think I've ever successfully watched the movie without falling asleep, each time a deeper sleep than last. I can not think anything else that least warranted a 10-episode prequel series.

[greenman]

Dark Crystal I think is a worse offender. I don't think I've ever successfully watched the movie without falling asleep, each time a deeper sleep than last. I can not think anything else that least warranted a 10-episode prequel series.

Not seen the prequels but I felt the film has held up better than Labyrinth, the heroes are obviously rather simplistic but it does manage to fell genuinely strange still with some very nice design work.

[rue the polywhirl]

Not seen the prequels but I felt the film has held up better than Labyrinth, the heroes are obviously rather simplistic but it does manage to fell genuinely strange still with some very nice design work.

As a piece of design work it is very possibly flawless but as a film it is seriously snooze-worthy. The skeksis still looked revoltingly incredible and them sucking the life out of things is by far the coolest moment in the movie and also an apt metaphor for the experience of watching every other moment of the movie.

[Hand Solo]

As a piece of design work it is very possibly flawless but as a film it is seriously snooze-worthy. The skeksis still looked revoltingly incredible and them sucking the life out of things is by far the coolest moment in the movie and also an apt metaphor for the experience of watching every other moment of the movie.

I think all the characters were originally going to speak a made-up language and you just had to guess what the plot was, until the executives caught wind of this and were like "No dialogue? Write a fuckin' script!" and so the exposition was tacked on at the last minute. Similarly Labyrinth went through over 25 re-writes, Terry Jones working on what should have been the final story except when Bowie became attached this was mostly eviscerated to feature the Goblin King a lot more and space for musical numbers, then a bunch more re-writers at the shooting script stage to punch up the humour to keep Bowie interested.

[badaids]

Superman - I loved that when I was a kid, that'll be a good watch with my 8 year old daughter.  First thought; fuck me it's about 16 hours long.  The colour palette is horrible like it's been colour matched to a commodore 64 or a jigsaw puzzle that's been left in a charity shop window for too long.  It's also really bleak and dull, with loads of fun nuclear weapons, the earthquake, and general threat of loved ones being pointlessly killed and ANGUISH.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Pah. There should be more nuclear weapons, earthquakes and the general threat of loved ones being pointlessly killed in child-friendly films. It's character-building.

I take it your daughter didn't enjoy the film?

[Thomas]

I watched Labyrinth for the first time a couple of years ago, and it managed to disappoint on first viewing. Zorry Dzavid.

[here4glinner]

Labyrinth is one of the greatest movies of all time. I watched it endlessly as a child and I watch it about once a year as an adult. It's particularly good if you are on LSD. In fact I'd say it's my favourite movie, an important film in the story of my and my gf's relationship, and we've even got a David Bowie poster on the wall that says 'It's only forever - not long at all.' And we listen to the soundtrack in the car on long journeys, and sing along to it.

To continue the LSD theme, once I watched Silent Hill on LSD and thought it was incredible, a psychedelic horror story masterpiece, some of the most astounding visuals and setpieces I'd ever seen in horror. Then watched it again on LSD after raving about it to my gf and it was one of the stupidest fucking films I've ever seen.

[SteveDave]

For me it's "Trainspotting" and "Lost In Translation" mostly because I first saw them in a packed cinema (not at the same time) and the audiences reaction to different scenes (and being sat next to a Japanese fellow who was killing himself laughing at certain points) Watching them on video/DVD later on there wasn't the same atmos. Obviously. And send. 

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Labyrinth is one of the greatest movies of all time. I watched it endlessly as a child and I watch it about once a year as an adult. It's particularly good if you are on LSD. In fact I'd say it's my favourite movie, an important film in the story of my and my gf's relationship, and we've even got a David Bowie poster on the wall that says 'It's only forever - not long at all.' And we listen to the soundtrack in the car on long journeys, and sing along to it.

To continue the LSD theme, once I watched Silent Hill on LSD and thought it was incredible, a psychedelic horror story masterpiece, some of the most astounding visuals and setpieces I'd ever seen in horror. Then watched it again on LSD after raving about it to my gf and it was one of the stupidest fucking films I've ever seen.

Do you do a lot of things on LSD?

[here4glinner]

Do you do a lot of things on LSD?

not now I've got a kid

But I certainly used to. Art galleries, concerts, festivals, movies, music, painting, reading poems, walking through the park... lying in a hot tub listening to Sufjan Stevens

I suppose looking at his little smiling face makes the sacrifice worth it. Also I kinda feel like I've done it all, at least twice. Like who watches Silent Hill more than once? jfc

[Armin Meiwes]

alien 3 - loved it as a 20 yearold, seems embarrasing now

HEAT - nice shiny surfaces, sure - very nolan esque, but denerio is fucking SHITE in it, completley charmless, pachino not much better huffing about like a corpse thats been temporarily revived by being taxidermied with cocaine

Oof yeah totally agree with that, just saw it a few weeks ago although it was a first watch so doesn't quite fit with the title of this thread, but yeah it looked great, had this really appealing sort of sheen over it but the characters and relationships in it were all ridiculous and not even vaguely believable (de niro's being with that woman was one of the least credible relationships I've seen in a film for a long time) and whilst I thought de niros performance THAT much, Pacino was just embarrassing.

[amputeeporn]

The Dark Knight

Radicle on first viewing - I was stunned, it was like superhero movies had grown up (I know), and I legit considered it one of the best action movies I'd ever seen until a recent rewatch.

It was toe-curlingly embarrassing on several levels - but the dialogue in particular was kind of painful to sit through. Doubt I'd ever watch it again.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Before lockdown I was watching some real trash classics with my friends and was aghast to discover Road House is now boring to me. Who gives a fuck about some grubby old pub? Fuck that.

[Armin Meiwes]

Oof yeah totally agree with that, just saw it a few weeks ago although it was a first watch so doesn't quite fit with the title of this thread, but yeah it looked great, had this really appealing sort of sheen over it but the characters and relationships in it were all ridiculous and not even vaguely believable (de niro being with that woman was one of the least credible relationships I've seen in a film for a long time) and whilst I didn't hate de niros performance THAT much, Pacino was just embarrassing.

[El Unicornio, mang]

The Dark Knight

Radicle on first viewing - I was stunned, it was like superhero movies had grown up (I know), and I legit considered it one of the best action movies I'd ever seen until a recent rewatch.

It was toe-curlingly embarrassing on several levels - but the dialogue in particular was kind of painful to sit through. Doubt I'd ever watch it again.

I was kind of disappointed too after a recent rewatch, and I really didn't care for Heath Ledger's version of the Joker. I still really like Batman Begins though, the first half at least.

I loved Fight Club and must have seen it 20 or so times years ago but watched it the other night and found a lot of it pretty cringe and infantile.