Most overrated movies?

[Edward]

What, I never mentioned Pulp Fiction, here before??

I had the DVD, years ago and watched it many times. But, I just don't get it.

It's still a "filmed adult comic" to me. I don't know, where the fame comes from. Sure, it was 1994, when we were in elementary school, so before "my time".

Is it "Butch", that made it famous?

Partly it's of its time. Tarrantino was the hot new director, coming off the back of Reservoir Dogs two years previously. It was a refreshing change from a lot of the cinema that was around at the time - it was different. Cool dialogue. The playing around with timeframe in the narrative was also novel for mainstream cinema at that point in time - it helped give a lot of audiences the sense that they were being given a bit of credit for being able to understand and fit it together. It really launched Uma Thurman as well. It seems to have bedded in as something of a classic - at least the poster remains a big seller, and I see undergraduates buying that one the way my generation bought images of Travis Bickle or Vito Corleone.


The relationship with Butch was probably the opposite: my feeling at the time was it gave Willis a sort of credibility beyond just being a mainstream action picture guy. I think it might also have been the picture that launched his shaven headed look? It also did wonders for Travolta, who really was seen as washed up and 'over' at the time - though imo he rather threw that away with his choice of pictures thereafter.

 

[tonyb]

What, I never mentioned Pulp Fiction, here before??

I had the DVD, years ago and watched it many times. But, I just don't get it.

It's still a "filmed adult comic" to me. I don't know, where the fame comes from. Sure, it was 1994, when we were in elementary school, so before "my time".

Is it "Butch", that made it famous?

Gotta part company with you on this one, too. Maybe it‘s a cultural difference. I can see how much of that movie, made in the US for a predominately US audience, maybe doesn’t “read” so effectively in other contexts. Once a viewer accepts that the title isn’t accidental, that the movie is quite deliberately JUST A MOVIE, it becomes big fun. The scene early in the film, the scene where the kids get murdered, might provoke disgust initially. But when we return to that scene late in the film it’s a riot. The non-linear storytelling rewards the viewer’s attention.