I just feel like I need to indulge in a bit of a rant and this seems as good a place as any.
But seriously, am I the only one who didn't like The Jungle Book? How does this movie have a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.9 on IMDB? This movie has the worst child actor in recent memory and a story so cliche and by-the-numbers that it's insulting even for children. Several moments, like when Baloo started reciting the wolfs' mantra, were so cheesy and cringe-worthy that I can't possibly imagine anyone, regardless of age, sitting through it without rolling their eyes. The dialogue is so bland that I could have written it myself, and I'm an idiot. Most of the voice-acting was good but Bill Murray and Christopher Walken sound and act 'like themselves' so much that it breaks immersion every time they speak. Yes, the special effects were amazing, but is that literally all it takes for universal acclaim? What on earth am I missing here?
By contrast, last night I watched The Informers from 2009. Now I'm a Bret Easton Ellis fan and I had enjoyed the book this film was based on, so perhaps I was biased. But I thought it was quite good. I thought the cinematography was really impressive and the acting was (mostly) good. I thought it had some interesting things to say about society and about life--depressing things, maybe, but still worth thinking about. Long story short, I liked it.
Well, this morning I hop on the internet and, apparently, I was supposed to fucking hate it. 13% on Rotten Tomatoes. Every critic on earth despised it. Jesus! I mean, it wasn't the next Great American Film but that film simply does NOT warrant as much hatred as it got. Everyone says it has unlikeable characters and not enough plot--that was the whole point! Does every movie seriously need a warm fuzzy Hollywood ending to be considered worth watching?
So on the one had we have The Jungle Book, which is a shallow, cynical cash-grab banking on nostalgia and huge amounts of money poured into special effects, with absolutely no art or soul of any kind. Then we have the Informers, which was complex and thoughtful and certainly had its faults but at least was aiming for something more than mindless entertainment that would be as profitable as possible. One gets rave reviews and the other is despised by everyone alive except me.
I'm just saying, I feel like some kind of idiot when I end up liking some movie that everyone else hated, or disliking a movie that everyone else loved. Do I just have terrible taste in movies? Am I just not sophisticated or cultured enough to tell what makes a movie good? Maybe I should just stop reading reviews for the sake of my self-esteem.