Entertainment
The 10 Most Overrated Movies of All Time, Ranked
This is hard to introduce on two fronts. What makes something overrated in the eyes of someone is pretty straightforward. That person does not like it as much as most other people seem to, and that person, on some level, feels confusion as to why so many people seem to love it. Maybe they don’t even hate what they’re calling overrated; they just feel it’s not really all that, compared to its reputation.
And then on the other front, it’s hard to justify the movies below, and there is a sense that people are inevitably going to dislike what they see here. If you imagine all this written in first person, and then read it in a whiny voice or something, maybe that’ll mitigate things. Or if you want to think people who call things overrated are themselves overrated, then knock yourself out.
10
‘The Leopard’ (1963)
The Leopard is big, beautiful, and boring. The idea of two out of three ain’t being all that bad, though… well, there you go. The size and beauty here count for something. Unless the size of it all (or, more specifically, the length) goes a long way toward making things boring. The Leopard goes for more than three hours, and it depicts a certain way of life dying a slow death.
Maybe it could be likened to War and Peace, but without as much war stuff, and then the drama isn’t as interesting either. There is spectacle here to some extent, and The Leopard is hard to fault on a technical front (outside its one laughable attempt at depicting a battle scene of sorts), but it’s so inert. It’s probably meant to be a bit inert and like a long sigh being let out, yet the sigh here is just too long.
9
‘The Sound of Music’ (1965)
Instead of being the longest musical of all time, The Sound of Music “merely” feels like the longest musical of all time. Also, there are other musicals that put too many of their memorable songs in the first half, and have very little by way of memorable music in the back half. The Rocky Horror Picture Show might well be the worst offender, but at least the first half of that movie is as great as it is.
And that film’s not too long, in any event. The Sound of Music just goes on and on, and this is something that can be said about a few big films from the 1950s and 1960s, when the film industry seemed keen to go a little bigger and longer in an attempt to compete with the rising popularity of television. It’s just The Sound of Music… on and on and on. It never ends. And you know what? Some of those beloved songs from the (still superior) first half are kind of annoying anyway.
8
‘Shutter Island’ (2010)
This is coming from someone who thinks a ton of Martin Scorsese movies are actually kind of underrated and over-hated (at times), but Shutter Island is a bit of a miss, by the director’s high standards. It’s perhaps fairer to say that it’s the closest Scorsese has come to missing, because Shutter Island does a few things right as a psychological thriller/mystery film, including making its main twist hit pretty hard.
It’s just like, man, everything else is kind of tedious. There are some movies that basically have a level of popularity and acclaim just because of their twists, and this is one of them. If you want to have a film that exists for a twist, don’t make the film nearly two and a half hours long. This is paced in a way where it honestly feels a good deal longer than The Irishman, despite being much shorter.
7
‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’ (1974)
It’s hard to find many negative reviews of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. It’s been given tens of thousands of ratings on Letterboxd, and sure, it’s not a famous or super widely-watched movie, so maybe if it had hundreds of thousands of ratings, you’d start to see more dissenting opinions. But of those tens of thousands of ratings, only 110, at the time of writing, give it the lowest rating possible (0.5 stars out of 5).
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul doesn’t deserve scorn to that level, but also, what’s there to love here? Maybe it’s the fact that it feels grounded and real, but possibly more mundane than anything else, and that the romance it explores is an unconventional one, but truth be told, it is so boring. And it’s not very well-acted or put together, even if some of that awkwardness feels like it’s intentional. It’s potentially “real” and raw, but at what cost?
6
‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)
There are various Wim Wenders movies out there that are more interesting than Paris, Texas, which is somehow his most acclaimed film, even when Perfect Days, Until the End of the World, The American Friend, and Faraway, So Close exist. Yes, Faraway, So Close, the sequel to Wings of Desire, and not Wings of Desire. Wings of Desire is also kind of overrated. Someone trying to keep things objective and not in the first person really feels these things.
Paris, Texas is just a bit too slow, and there is more to feel with the other (and better) films by Wenders. There are some striking images here, a couple of powerful scenes, and the opportunity to see Harry Dean Stanton in a rare leading role is admittedly nice, but Paris, Texas is 145 minutes long, and you do really feel each and every one of those 145 minutes.
5
‘La Haine’ (1995)
It’s a movie about important things, and it does want to capture a certain youthful energy, but La Haine also feels like it’s trying too hard. On the topic of youth, the director and the main stars here were in their 20s when the film was made, but La Haine really feels like a student film stretched out to a feature-length runtime, and one where the “students” were given a bit more money than you’d expect.
The authenticity here is why it’s liked, but there is also a certain immaturity and pretentiousness to La Haine. A good chunk of the people who like it are themselves probably in film school, or around the right age. The ambition is here, and what it’s going for can be admired, but La Haine lays things on so thick, and it suffers from being overwritten at times, and as well as over-directed, like, most of the time.
4
‘Satantango’ (1994)
If you read positive reviews of Satantango, you’ll find people marveling at how despairing it is for such a long time, and how effectively depressing it is, as a result. It does look striking at times, and if it set out to inspire such negative emotions, then it technically succeeded. You feel the sadness the characters do, and the hopelessness of the situation.
It’s just that you have to wonder, is it really that hard to make a viewer feel bored, restless, and depressed for about seven hours? Yeah, Satantango is seven hours long. A little longer, actually. People might well be proud of themselves for conquering it, and then they give the film a rating of 4/5 or 5/5, instead of themselves. The film doesn’t deserve it, though. And, truth be told, maybe you don’t, either. You wasted your time. You felt the bad things. You felt them for a long time. You could’ve watched three good movies of a more standard length instead. But are you going to let that forever-gone time be cursed? Maybe you hand out a positive rating because what else can you do, to memorialize all that time gone to waste? Just be honest and dislike Satantango the way it dislikes you. It’s as spiteful as another long, drawn-out, boring, and bizarrely acclaimed film that’ll be mentioned in a short amount of time (if only “short” was an adjective that could be used to describe either).
3
‘The Sting’ (1973)
The Sting is liked for being a revenge movie with less violence than most revenge movies, and for being a mash-up of crime and comedy, genre-wise. And it’s got a memorable A-list pairing with Paul Newman and Robert Redford both starring in it, and doing their usual thing, having good chemistry, blah, blah, blah, it’s fine. It’s all good.
The overrated allegations are being made here largely on the basis that it’s a pretty solid movie that dominated the Oscars the year it came out.
It is a decently good movie. It’s hard to feel anything like hatred for The Sting, but it also feels a bit minor, for lack of a better word. It inspires this feeling of “Oh, that’s it, I guess,” when it’s over. And the repetitive music throughout is annoying. There’s also a weird lack of urgency to things, when it comes to what The Sting is actually about, and the overrated allegations are being made here largely on the basis that it’s a pretty solid movie that dominated the Oscars the year it came out (winning seven all up, from 10 nominations).
2
‘Love Streams’ (1984)
With a bunch of John Cassavetes movies, it feels like he was so preoccupied with whether he could make films a certain way, he never stopped to think about whether he should make films in that certain way. Love Streams was one of his final films, and so it all feels particularly heavy with the Cassavetes-isms, because there are dysfunctional characters, little by way of plot, and so much rambling and chaotic/improvised dialogue that his films are known for having.
Apparently he said, to paraphrase the parts without profanity, “If you don’t have time to see it, don’t. If you don’t like it, don’t… I didn’t make it for you anyway,” regarding Love Streams, with this post suggesting it was said during production. So, Cassavetes knew Love Streams ran the risk of being impenetrable. It feels like some of the praise it’s received is a bit strained, honestly.
1
‘Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ (1975)
In 2022, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles topped the Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, which is held every 10 years. It put more attention on Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, and that’s made it a target. So, here it is, being targeted. It is a movie about a woman living a thankless and repetitive life.
It makes its point and then uses a very long runtime to reiterate that point. You get it, and then the movie keeps on making you get it. To induce a feeling of boredom in a viewer, even if that’s the point, is not particularly impressive. Making a boring movie is not worth celebrating. There is nothing genuinely impressive about Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It hates you and disrespects your finite time on this planet, and people seem impressed by how much it hates them, like they want to be in on being hated. It’s spiteful and pretentious cinema.
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