Five Overappreciated Films

September 7th, 2011 | POSTED BY Benjamin Rendall

3. Spider-Man 2. When I went to see the second Spirder-Man film, I was excited because I had enjoyed the first one, and now here was the sequel that also had critical acclaim to it. However, its tone felt really off. Here is Peter Parker, out there being Spider-Man, and it is really screwing up his life. He is constantly late to work, he is failing in school, and he is distant from everyone he cares about, especially the woman he loves. Then he quits being Spider-Man and his life gets better; he does better in work and school, he starts being able to connect, and, most importantly, he starts being happy. Then we are supposed to root for him to become Spider-Man again? Being Spider-Man is ruining his chances to become a self-sufficient adult. I know he has guilt over his uncle’s death, but I doubt his uncle wants him to starve to death as well. I found it hard to be convinced that Peter should become Spider-Man again. Yes, maybe that one time saving Mary Jane, but that he feels the need to do it all the time and ruin his life?

One other thing to comment on is the villain, Dr. Octopus. If you have a comic book villain, you usually see them as a tragic figure who fell into darkness or too far into the dark motivations that drive them, and here they try to do an amalgamation of both and it is really uneven. One of the big things that was really annoying about this was that he has the loving relationship with his wife, and that love is important to him. Then, when his wife dies, he mentions it once and then he just seems to forget about this!! So what was the point of having it in the film to begin with?! Then there is the villain’s motivation to do the experiment because his mechanical arms tell him to! Forgetting his wife, he just goes at it being a villain, but even then he does nothing beyond a few fights. He never does anything really that menacing (for a comic book movie there is a real small body count) and he seems able to fight back against the arms and be good, almost like he just flips a switch.

Besides these big moments, the movie is really uneven all around. There is a rival guy for Mary Jane who does nothing, and a lot of random side characters, and moments that add nothing to the film, including a joke about Peter Parker never paying his rent. Then on top of that, the movie ends with the biggest cliché in movie history! This movie is definitely overrated and not worth watching.




2. Wall-E. I know this will get a lot of negative comments. I will have you know, however, that I love many Pixar films: Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3. I think they have great emotional characters, interesting stories, and really can get to you in ways that many live action films could not. With Wall-E I had very high expectations; I loved the trailer for this movie, watching Wall-E looking for stuff in the rubble. There was an innocence and whimsy to him that made him look like a great character to watch. For the first half of the film things were going good: his interaction with his pet cockroach, him going about his day alone, and the curiosity looking over the trash were cute, and when Eve comes down, that works as well. Seeing him trying to interact with her and make a friend was fun, especially when he tries to protect her when she goes into hibernation.

Then they go to outer space and we are bumped over the head with this message about the dangers of overindulging and not taking care of the planet. This was really forced on us and it takes you out of the film and away from what really made it interesting, Wall-E and Eve. There are a few scenes that are fun with them together, but for the most part, it continues with the bombardment. If not that, then we are given waves of traditional clichés, like how this “machine” is showing us to be a better person, and then there is the really obvious villain. Also there is this overdose of cute little sidekick robots that seem to be there simply to have more action figures to sell to kids.

There is also a scene near the end of the film that is supposed to give us an emotional feeling for Wall-E, but it comes so far out of left field that it is hard to really connect with it, and it feels just tacked on to give the movie more “emotional weight.” As a short film, Wall-E may have worked, but for me it becomes too bogged down in its own message and it leaves its characters behind.




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Crash, Knocked Up, Spider-Man 2, The English Patient, Wall-E