James Berardinelli's 5 Most Overrated Films of the Year
http://www.reelviews.net/reelthoughts/reelthought_1514729800
Once more unto the breach, dear friends...one last time looking back through the haze of the fast-departing year. One final list before turning my attention to the bleak tundra of January and February's films.share
Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes "overrated." For me, it's a film that, regardless of whether I liked it or not, has been over-praised in the general conversation, often by my fellow critics. This year, I decided to pick through the debris of the releases and select the five titles I felt were lauded far beyond what they deserved. As with any list, this is highly subjective. You may agree or disagree. You may think I'm out to lunch on all five choices. You may believe my #1 film of the year, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri belongs on an "overrated" list. The intent of a list like this (any list, really) isn't to provide a definitive roster of titles but to provoke rumination and discussion. Rather than discussing the merits of the films on this list, I'll provide a short explanation of why I think they're overrated. Some of the reasons may irk those with a PC-oriented mindset. I don't have sacred cows, except maybe Luke Skywalker. These are alphabetical, not ranked numerically.
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Beauty and the Beast: (Rating: Three out of four stars.) I enjoyed this for what it is: a vastly inferior live-action remake of a classic animated film. Given a choice, I'd choose to see the 1991 version over the 2017 version ten out of ten times. The rush to praise this film, with some even going so far as to call it a "modern classic", has bothered me, as did its phenomenal $500+ domestic box office gross. The movie was at best a somewhat forgettable and completely unnecessary reworking of something that didn't need to be touched. (There was an opportunity to do more with it - to adapt the Broadway musical - that was abandoned early in the process.) Worse still, it has opened the floodgates to more of these. I can understand critics liking the movie but the level of lavish praise took me aback.