"Classics" that you were underwhelmed by.

[TheXRatedDodo]

Book: The Catcher in the Rye. Sure, it wasn't that bad, but nothing happens!

If you think nothing happens in that book, then I'd say that's more your problem than the book's problem.
Through the minutia comes the most detailed of observations..

 

[Gindil]

Lord of the Rings the books, I mean it was a brilliant and beautiful story but it almost hurt to read, the hobbit was better though.

This is pretty similar to why I don't like the Lord of the Rings in general.

I'll watch the Star Wars trilogy (you know what I'm talking about) but I just can't bear to watch LotR all the way through.

Maybe the Hobbit movie will be better.

 

[natster43]

The Pearl. It was pretty damn mediocre.

 

[De Ronneman]

Movie: Too many. Seriously: Citizen Kane, Reservoir Dogs and Tron to name a few.
Games: Again, there's a lot, but a lot of it is because of my hatred for turnbased combat. Final Fantasy, Terranigma, Lufia and Chronotrigger fot this category.
Books: Catcher in the Rye (forced to read, ty teacher!) and the Hobbit (loved the actual LOTR though) jump to mind.
Music: I absolutely hate Lamb of God. I don't like it, I'm regularly told I don't know music and Metallica hasn't released a good album since 1991. (although I completely agree, I do love King Nothing)

To counter this, I will state stuff everyone hates, but I love:
Movie: I have seen all the Transformers movies by Bay. They weren't great, or even good(enter waving American flag here, with explosions), but they were passable. once.
Games: All Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship games are on my shelf. not sure how many people agree.
Books: Go. Read. The. "Watch" Series. By. Sergej. Lukjanekow. In order: Nightwatch, Daywatch, Twilightwatch and Last Watch. Great books, everyone seems to hate them.
Music: DragonForce. Period. Not the lyrics or solo's, but what they embody: a group that have been shunted and ridiculed, but never stop, because they do what they like. I've seen them live in 2008 and thought all the new songs(Ultra Beatdown) were played rather good. All the old stuff lacked. The new live album shows they've learned that there's more to a band than CD's.

 

[Elvoret]

Final Fantasy VII. I was excpecting it to be so much better thanit was.

 

[RowdyRodimus]

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time wasn't bad or anything, but it hasn't aged well and there isn't a single thing that it's done that hasn't been done better. Also, I don't like games with no story. Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty much allergic to stories beyond "once upon a time, they lived happily ever after, the end."

The Dark Knight, on the other hand, was bad, and that's because they based it off of bad characters from a bad comic book publisher. Batman is not, nor has he ever been interesting, the Joker puts most smart people to sleep and makes the others laugh at how idiotic he is, and the admittedly strong performances by Aaron Eckhardt, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman were eclipsed in the wake of "Y SO SRS, OMG HE'S SO DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP". Tim Burton's movies were so much better it was unreal. It's a damn shame that nobody gets them.

Someone already touched on The Lord of the Rings, but I'd like to go back to it. Tolkien, as creative as he was, could not write to save his fucking life. The books are preachy, monotonous drivel that spend one page on critical plot development for every twenty used to describe a piece of furniture. The man was so in love with this world he created that he forgot to pace them as a story rather than present them as a historical text for what is, admittedly, probably the best medieval-fantasy setting ever crafted. The problem is that as expansive as it's always been, Middle-Earth is just fucking boring.

I get the Tim Burton Batman films (the first being my favorite movie of all time). Michael Keaton was the perfect choice to play Burton's Batman and Bruce Wayne, a "regular" guy who is deeply disturbed to almost a point of psychosis trying to lead two lives and in the end failing to be able to even really live one. The entire point of the movie lies in the "Guy wakes up, gets ready for work, goes down to eat breakfast" speech he tries to give Vicki before the Joker comes in. Also, Michael Keaton did more acting with his eyes while in the costume than Bale did through the whole of the two he's done so far.

But that plays into a movie that underwhelmed me and that is Batman Begins. Admittedly I read the (much better) novelization before the movie came out and loved it, but when it came time for the movie I just hated it. I hated Caine as Alfred, I hated the way they had Ra's Al Ghul and Bale as Batman was just horrible. Then again, I'm not a fan of Nolan's movies anyway.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Pulp Fiction. My friends didn't shut up about it and how great it was for one year and I finally watched it so they would quit bugging me about it. I find it pretty dull and just not good.

 

[Thespian]

Casablanca. I didn't hate it. It was just "Meh". One big fat meh. I honestly didn't care if Elsa stayed with Rick or left with Laszlo or if they were all massacred by a stegosaurus.

 

[standokan]

Lord of the Rings the books, I mean it was a brilliant and beautiful story but it almost hurt to read, the hobbit was better though.

This is pretty similar to why I don't like the Lord of the Rings in general.

I'll watch the Star Wars trilogy (you know what I'm talking about) but I just can't bear to watch LotR all the way through.

Maybe the Hobbit movie will be better.

No that's not really what I meant, I meant that Tolkiens way of writing is just horrible to read.

 

[Azriel Nightshade]

Mother 3. I might just not the right kind of guy for it, but I could not get into the game. Also the combat system is probably on of the worst I have ever played. Having said all that, I only got to the part where

Spoiler

the mom dies

so perhapse I didn't get far enough.

 

[Imbechile]

Movie: One flew over the cuckoo's nest - It's a good movie, but I didn't fing it to be OMG OMG OMG that my parents, friends and the whole internet was saying.

Game: Resident evil 4 - I fail to see how it's the best RE game. The start is actually really good, but the game goes on for fucking forever. It just becomes tedious as hell.

 

[Gindil]

]No that's not really what I meant, I meant that Tolkiens way of writing is just horrible to read.

Yeah, how he talks about every last blade of grass in minute detail, is pretty waring. If he had kept the books to just the Hobbit, the world would have been a better place. I just think he ran out of ideas, given the entire series is about walking though. You don't learn about Saruman in a good amount of detail, Sauron is pretty much non existent as a bad guy, and even the orcs could use a little updating in regards to being an evil army with no control.

Tolkien got lazy. It's almost like reading Goodkind after the 5th Sword of Truth book.

 

[Caligulove]

The Exorcist.

Supposed to be this 'ridiculously scary' fucked-up gross horror film. Some parts got to me, of course, but I was definitely underwhelmed since I had already seen the vastly superior film, John Carpenter's The Thing so I was expecting something to top the fucked up terror I legitimately felt while watching that film, but it just never got that scary. Might also be because I've seen the film parodied so much.

For games-

The first Zelda. I've definitely been spoiled by the successive, better games in the series.

 

[Sharalon]

I thought The Catcher In The Rye was terrible. Maybe it's a generation thing.

Oh yeah! Did not care for that thing one bit! Still surprised how i managed to get through it...

 

[freakydan]

The only movie that I had to stop because I just could not stand it anymore was A Clockwork Orange. It was just...garbage. A bunch of guys I didn't care for saying stuff I didn't understand, some guy beats (kills?) a woman with a statue of a penis, gets sent to jail, gets mentally fucked, I still don't care, he goes out in the world, has troubles adapting, I still don't care, two people fucking in a bubble bath while people applaud. Huh.

I also really hated the last 1/3 or 1/4 of 2001: A Space Odysee (or however you spell it). You know, the part after the story ended, but Mr. Kubrick decided to tack on a whole extra act full of landscapes with distorted colors and unexplained shots of the main character aging/unaging and jumping from one set to another? Yeah, don't get what's so "classic" there...

 

[Grey_Focks]

Pretty much any Final Fantasy other then the PS1 Tactics. I just hate the "stand feet away from each other and take turns smacking each other" combat. That, and grinding just isn't fun.

Movies or books? Nothing really comes to mind.

 

[MrJKapowey]

Movie: Waynes World - I found so mind-numbingly grating that it was only because a friend forced me to watch it that I actually didn't plasti-cuff my eyes shut or something...

Book: I can't remember it's name, but it was about this guy who was like a cowboy, but in some kind of wasteland which sounded like it bordered on to a fantasy realm, but this guy had twin Browning Hi-Powers and was hunting someone who was like a magician. I dunno, I just didn't like it.

Spoiler: If you can tell me it's name then you gets a cookie.

And at some point he went in a town where the magician had gone and raised some bloke from the dead, and someone said 'nineteen' to the dead dude then EVERYONE went psycho (like zombies) on the main guy. So he shot and killed everyone in the town, including his non-psycho girlfriend, then at some point he met some kid in the wilderness, who he later killed. Yes I know that's not much to go by...

Game: HALO Reach - There, I said it! I found the crowning jewel in my most fave video game series EVER underwhelming. Not the gameplay, not the MP, not the extras (Fire Fight and Forge), not the customisation (better than CoD:BO's 'create a class 2.0' BS), it was the way it f*cked the canonical books, almost all of them, to the point that things which fitted perfectly now jar horribly under my gaze, all because of the way HALO Reach screwed around with 'The Fall of Reach', 'First Strike' and 'Ghosts of Onyx'.

 

[darkman80723]

the bible....plot holes and shallow, unbelievable characters.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Nightmare on Elm Street, Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, and Poltergeist were the major disappointments for me. I don't see how those were scary or intense, and I felt bored watching them.

I tend to stay away from classics that people tend to praise way too much, and I highly doubt I'm missing much, other than having the right to say I watched it and I hated it.