Watched it tonight, last time was in 2000
It still sucks. It's a horrible movie. Stupid plot and characters.
shareSo go and have a banana then, sheesh...
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MovieChat Forums > Entrapment (1999) Discussion > Watched it tonight, last time was in 200...
"It still sucks."
What, did you expect the movie to CHANGE between then and now?
This is the problem with people using terms like 'dated', 'aged' or 'not aged well'. Movies don't age, and the whole 'dated'-thing was supposed to just refer to 'being able to tell when the movies was made', not to be used as some kind of insult or description of whether the movie is worth watching or not.
Movies don't change, they don't age, they stay EXACTLY the same. If it sucked then, it's going to suck now, as it will never change.
If it was good then, and sucks now, then it was NEVER actually good, you just THOUGHT it was good - the only thing that changed here, was YOU. So saying the movie 'still' sucks, is wrong, because it never had a chance to change.
To me, this movie has potential, some gorgeous scenes - I love the Kuala Lumpur stuff and the castles in Scotland and all that. However, it becomes a live-action cartoon the moment anything 'interesting' starts to happen, as in Connery suddenly appearing and disappearing (a wizard with teleport spell??), and the less said about that really stupid and 100% unrealistic ending, the better.
This movie tries to be 'cooler than it is', and shoots itself in the foot in the process. At least the Charlie's Angels movies, especially the second one, KNOW they're ridiculous, unrealistic cartoon things that you are not supposed to think about, but just accept all the stupidity to have fun with them, so they actually ARE fun.
This movie tries to be serious, and yet shows us ridiculous scenes where nothing is realistic and the timing is way off (the 'movie magic' happens a bit too much with this one, where you KNOW someone should not have enough time to perform something, but SOMEHOW they managed to do it anyway - it's like something chasing someone, shown to be almost RIGHT at them - then the angle changes and suddenly it's much further away than it was previously. NO movie cheats as much this way as THIS movie does!)..
"At least the Charlie's Angels movies, especially the second one, KNOW they're ridiculous, unrealistic cartoon things that you are not supposed to think about, but just accept all the stupidity to have fun with them, so they actually ARE fun."
^Uh no, Charlies Angels is dumb, trashy cringe. Entrapment is top notch, stylish, and classy on every level of production.
Some movies age better than others, some are perennial.
When the movie relies on great storytelling and characters (The Maltese Falcon) we'll be watching it and singing its praises from here to the foreseeable future.
Some movies, as you say, are simply dated. Camera angles, shot length, lighting and colour palettes, and acting styles change from era to era, so some stuff is "very '70s" or was clearly made in a particular time and place. That doesn't make them age "well" or "badly", just shows when they were made - an excellent point; I'm glad you brought it up.
The stuff that ages, though, are things like effects. Some special FX pass muster and wow audiences of the day, but they look "off" or goofy now. A lot of rear projection is this way: accepted at the time, but people now don't like it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder here, to some extent, because (in my experience) most older people are okay with older effects, while people who grew up closer to today's date are more likely to be dismissive, laugh at how "bad" acting used to be (even though a bit of theatrical flourish is hardly worse than mumble-acting), and get antsy in slower-paced, black-and-white movies.
Other things that "age poorly" are circumstantial. I can look past it and still enjoy the film, but sometimes a world-shaping event makes a movie feel strange retroactively. Imagine if Spider-man (Raimi's first one) had been released in August of 2001, and Spidey webbed up baddies in-between the World Trade Center towers (as shown in a teaser trailer). It might feel different now. Or in The Naked Gun where a big plot is that OJ Simpson *couldn't* be the killer! He was framed! I still love that movie, but it plays differently. I was watching Friends with somebody who hadn't seen it before, and there's an episode where Brad Pitt guest-stars as a guy who *hates* Rachel. I had to pause it and explain to my friend that this was made before they were divorced.