The most disappointing films you have ever watched in a theater. (1 Viewer)

[Bryan^H]

Name some of the movies you saw at the theater that left you completely disappointed, and saddened you wasted your money on them!

I'll start with a few of my picks:


Spider-Man 3
Unbelievably disappointing follow up to the wonderful second film in the series. This was so bad I think I erased it from my memory, and I'm pretty sure that is a good thing. Hideous film with absolutely no redeeming quality.


Back to the Future II
After waiting what seemed forever for this anticipated sequel, I could not believe how much I hated this film. The third film was better, but it doesn't make the second film any easier to watch. I saw the very first film twice in the theater (still one of my favorite films) and the second film only made things unnecessarily complex, depressing, and pointless. I hated every minute of this.

Where the Wild Things Are
This got pretty good reviews from movie critics of the time, and I loved the book as a kid, so I watched it. The book didn't translate well to film. I hated it, it was miserable!
And to this day I still feel bad for the little girl and her friends that had her birthday party watching this ugly film (there was little reserved section for them near my seat). When the lights came up they looked like they just witnessed a 90 minute car crash.

 

[Sultanofcinema]

As a film Radio critic for 24 years, I 've never felt my money was wasted. As M says to Timothy Dalton's James Bond about Felix Leiter in License To Kill, "he knew the risks". Anticipation was always very high for a time and then all of a sudden, I was seeing so many films that were disappointing. Every Indiana Jones film after Raiders was a letdown for me. He was never the same character as Clint Eastwood was in Dirty Harry, He became a weaker character as the films progressed with The Enforcer, almost a TV film until Sudden Impact, then he was the Dirty Harry character of the first film again. Without going into sequels and prequels, The Hateful Eight (except for the fact that I took my son to his first 70MM show) was a prime example. 70MM photography and you spend it in a cabin!? A glacier melts faster. For me the first Ghostbuster and Jurassic Park, thought they were boring. The original The Big Bounce with Ryan O' Neal and the lovely Leigh Taylor Young. Young Billy Young, Two Lane Blacktop, Cisco Pike, The Ultimate Warrior (Yul Brenner), Young Guns (little boys trying to be Burt Lancaster), Rules Don't Apply (Warren Beatty), Crazy Rich Asians, Snakes On A Plane, Taken ( I remember when Liam Neeson was an actor), Speed, Look Who's Talking, So Fine Mariangela Melato and Ryan O' Neal), The Toy, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Petulia, Logan's Run, Bolero, Mommie Dearest, Shanghai Surprise... so many more!

 

[Tino]

A few off the top of my head

Superman 3
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein
Star Trek 5
Arthur 2

 

[EricSchulz]

Thanks for reminding me to include Godzilla (1998)!

Doolittle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Oz, the Great and Powerful

I’m sure I was disappointed by more but those were right off the top of my head.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

It was rated R so I had to do a great deal of begging to get a parent to take me, and I remember feeling very let down by this as well.

 

[Tino]

It was rated R so I had to do a great deal of begging to get a parent to take me, and I remember feeling very let down by this as well.

I had read the script beforehand by Frank Darabont and loved it and told friends it was going to be awesome trust me.

Not.

 

[Radioman970]

They couldn’t. The film had a release date locked in before shooting began, and then a writer’s strike happened during preproduction so the choice was to either go with what they had or cancel the film, and realistically there was no way Paramount was canceling their franchise film at that point in time.

It did make money. So they probably felt okay about the turkey that kirky kooked! :p

 

[Malcolm R]

It was more about being at that pre-teen/teenage age where I was riding my bicycle solo to the theater for the first times, and how hard it was to scrounge up cash to go and how unpleasantly hilly the ride to and from the theater was. It was effort!

You're starting to attain that "Dad" sound.

"When I was your age I had to ride my bike to see a movie. We didn't have streaming at our fingertips. And it was uphill. In both directions."

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Hey I grew up in a town where it actually was uphill both ways to school!

 

[Clinton McClure]

Interesting list! If I may ask, if you walked out of Transformers, why did you go to the sequel?

I was told it was much better than the first film. It was not.

 

[Malcolm R]

Hey I grew up in a town where it actually was uphill both ways to school!

And it was raining or snowing or 20 below zero every day.

 

[Tino]

It’s so weird I just was talking to my family about the distances we walked to the movies in Jersey City NJ

From My home it was a 3 mile round trip walk to the local theater and an 8 mile round trip to the premium theater! And I did that trek at least twice a week from 10-17 years old. Yikes.

 

[bmasters9]

Very definitely 1997's Titanic, which I saw in 1998 in Atlanta with my mother and father, brother, and sister-in-law (was 17 then); that was 3 hrs. of absolute hell (if it had just been ship departs, ship hits iceberg, ship sinks, and all else that happened on that fateful 1912 evening, it may have been somewhat more tolerable; the chick flick and society junk really had it striking out with me).

 

[Jack P]

Biggest letdown experience - Titanic.

 

[bmasters9]

Biggest letdown experience - Titanic.

Why do you think so?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s so weird I just was talking to my family about the distances we walked to the movies in Jersey City NJ

From My home it was a 3 mile round trip walk to the local theater and an 8 mile round trip to the premium theater! And I did that trek at least twice a week from 10-17 years old. Yikes.

I feel like in today’s world I’d probably get in trouble as a parent if I let my kids walk around as much as I did when I was one. Google maps just told me it was a 4 mile round trip to the local theater when I was a kid, including a massive hill through a shady neighborhood bordering on a heavily trafficked, poorly lit main road. Going to the theater was fun because it was downhill all the way there, but the ride home was brutal, so if the movie stunk, it was a looooong trip back.

 

[Sultanofcinema]

Some more came to mind. The Little Drummer Girl (Diane Keaton), Coming Home (so in your face), Road To Perdition, great cast though, The Last Wave (Peter Weir), Hammersmith Is Out ( Mr. Burton), The Mirror Cracked with Mrs. Burton with Mr. Hamilton directing, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day, double double O nothing, Little Fauss and Big Halsy, Pink Cadillac, Cobra and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot, Bronco Billy, Shalako, Heavenly Bodies.

 

[Jack P]

Why do you think so?

Because as a Titanic buff for more than 20 years before I saw that film, I was expecting to see the last word on Titanic movies. This came after I'd been bowled over by the great Broadway musical "Titanic" earlier that same year. What I ended up seeing was a film that had great sets and an appalling lack of real history in favor of one of the worst cliched stories I have ever seen in an allegedly big spectacle film. I hated Jack and Rose and hated the fact that a film that could have for the first time shown us some real history moments that have never been depicted before like the Titanic's near-collision with the liner New York while leaving Southampton, instead gave me more about these fictional characters in a bad story I didn't care about. And this ended up being the first Titanic drama I ever saw that shows Maggie (Molly) Brown sitting there and not talking back to QM Hitchens which is false to history on all levels. It was just an awful script that dragged the film down completely for me. I've watched it only one time since to see if I was too harsh on it the first time I saw it and I ended up feeling my instincts were correct.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Definitely on board with all of the disdain for Back To The Future 2. I've only seen it once (theatrically on opening weekend) and HATED it for many of the reasons discussed. The first film is so bright, fun, hopeful, and optimistic and that is all forgotten when we get to the second film. I might feel different about it now, but once in this lifetime is enough. I did take a chance on the third film theatrically and enjoyed the Western motif quite a bit.

Continuing in that vein, I'll add my inevitable (and oft repeated) castigation of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. To be fair there are a handful of moments that I enjoyed, and conceptually I did like some plot elements, but the execution was awful and a lot of the dialog was simply laughable. Part of my reaction to this film was due to how much I had enjoyed the earlier films in the franchise which led to a lot of disappointment. Once again an opening weekend theatrical viewing which fits the thread's topic of "most disappointing films you have ever watched in a theater" to a TEE. I have tried a few visits over the years at home, but it remains my worst Trek film ever.

I'm sure there are others, but those two come readily to mind.

- Walter.

I didn't see "Final Frontier" until VHS, at which point I knew a) it'd bombed at the box office and b) it'd gotten bad reviews.

Those factors almost certainly lowered my expectations, and I really liked it!

I certainly get the criticisms, but I appreciate that it aimed for something fairly deep and philosophical - as did the also-oft-criticized "Generations".

Neither is a perfect film but I like their attempts at thematic depth.

People love them some "Voyage Home", but there's nothing below its surface. It espouses a good environmental message but it's not anything thought-provoking.

"FF" and "Generations" can prompt discussions - and have, in my life at least.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

The one that comes to mind first is Men in Black 2. I don't think it was bad, per se. It was like a marshmallow -- fun while it lasts, but fades quickly and is instantly forgettable.

I wasn't truly disappointed by "MIB2" because I didn't love the 1st one. Liked it, didn't love it.

But yeah, "MIB2" was definitely a step down in quality. It's basically a stale remake of the 1st one.

At least "3" was good!

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I understand the complaints about BTTF 2 - the darker stuff, the cliffhanger ending, etc.

But I liked that it advanced the story and tried something new, rather than a rehash of the original (which is what many sequels around then did). I loved the look at 2015 and all the futuristic stuff. I loved the time travel paradoxes and the consequences. I even liked the alternate 1985, as Marty slowly discovers what's happened. Only the return to 1955 was a bit of a letdown, as it seemed more routine (though I appreciated the filmmakers "recreating" scenes from the original). I really liked BTTF3, but it's also basically a rehash of the original, but set in a different time.

As I alluded/implied, I appreciate those differences now. And as noted, I like "2" at this point.

But from the perspective of 1989... HULK ANGRY!