When you boil it all down, it’s all subjective. Movie critics are really just people who are better at communicating their opinions clearly, but they aren’t perfect all of the time. Nor are they psychics in any way. Sometimes time (and audiences) won’t going to agree with them, and that’s okay.
As the following ten movies show us, there are times when a film isn’t an instant classic. Some require a bit more time to be broken in. Today’s trash might be tomorrow’s classic.
10. Fight Club
Don’t worry… There are actual “classic” films on this list. However I wanted to add some potential classics to this as well. Just don’t go freaking out.
Not the worst reviewed movie out there – but that’s actually what makes it interesting. What I mean is that this is the kind of movie you’d expect people to either hate or love – as Roger Ebert puts it in his October 1999 review of the film: “Fight Club is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy – the kind of ride where some people puke and others can’t wait to get on again.” What’s interesting, however, is that even that review doesn’t love it or hate it. In fact most reviews for Fight Club aren’t polarized but rather so-so.
See for yourself. New York Daily News called it “hardly groundbreaking”, the Miami Herald referred to it as “a bit of a dud”, and the Boston Globe said that its “chic indictment of empty materialist values fizzles.” They were all just too cool for this film.
There were some great reviews out there as well – but it’s interesting that when the critics didn’t like it, it was because they were bored by it.
9. Godzilla
It’s not hard to imagine a movie about a giant nuclear lizard getting mixed to poor reviews if it were released today – but for 1954 it’s a pretty groundbreaking concept. He might not be the first of his kind, but Godzilla is certainly the Mickey Mouse of humongous city-hating monsters.
There was a very specific reason that critics gave the film a lot of crap when it first came out in Japan – in fact, anyone who knows their history can probably guess why – it had been less than ten years since the country had been attacked in a nuclear strike on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now they had a film about a giant ridiculous monster that resulted from nuclear testing. It just left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
If that weren’t bad enough – on March 1st of the very same year this film was released a Japanese tuna fishing boat had been exposed to nuclear fallout from the US test on Bikini Atoll – resulting in what was thought to be the first death resulted from a hydrogen bomb. So yeah.
8. Scrooged
Another film that’s probably on the line when it comes to defining it as a ‘classic’ film – personally though, I don’t go a Christmas without watching this. And boy – Bill Murray makes a great asshole. It’s funny how likable he is no matter how unlikable he’s supposed to be.
Despite this, the critics freaking hated it. Like, really hated it. Variety called it an “appallingly unfunny comedy”, USA Today said it was a “monumental mess”, and the Los Angeles Times found it “as funny as a mugging.” Jesus. Most of the reviews seemed to think of it as some kind of ‘mess.’ As if the plot was somehow muddled.
Here’s a theory – perhaps everyone had been gauging this film all wrong when it first came out. Perhaps they expected it to be a true adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.” If that were the case than it’s easy to imagine why critics hated it.
7. Now Voyager
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if an old black & white film is actually good in the way it’s often hard to tell if an elderly person is actually wise. Old people can be dumb too right? It would be prejudiced to think otherwise. And in that respect, old films can be bad as well. That being said – Now Voyager is not considered to be a bad film in the least, and has contributed quite a lot to the genre of romance, however it’s easy to see how time had a factor in this. Firstly – it’s a genre that not everyone enjoys and secondly it’s sappy as all hell. That’s why this 1942 review from the New York Times isn’t all that surprising:
“Now Voyager, either because of the Hays office or its own spurious logic, endlessly complicates an essentially simple theme. For all its emotional hair-splitting, it fails to resolve its problems as truthfully as it pretends. In fact, a little more truth would have made the film a good deal shorter.”
No, it’s not exactly a declaration of hate – and the film did get a few nominations that year and even won for its score – but it also didn’t seem to wow anyone. As the review goes on to say, the film “stars out bravely” but ends “exactly where it started – and after two lachrymose hours.” Which is a nice way of saying that it was really emotional and had no payoff.
6. Predator
“Arnold Schwarzenegger fights an outer-space monster in a third-world jungle. The monster never has a chance. Neither does the jungle. Neither does the audience.”
Hah! OK Christian Science Monitor – that’s pretty good. And while it’s true that a film about a bunch of strongmen trampling down a pristine jungle environment with guns n’ ammo doesn’t make for the most thought-inducing film, it wasn’t really supposed to. That seems like the issue with most of the reviews for this film at the time of its release: either they understood what the film was trying to be or they didn’t.
The New York Times called it “alternately grisly and dull, with few surprises”, but there wasn’t really a point in the film where surprises were the main focus. It’s true that nostalgia might be a large factor in the popularity of this film – but it seems like most critics simply missed the big picture. It was about the Predator, and how super sweet he was – nothing more and nothing less.
Read on!