Recently, I came across one of those silly websites that purports to go in depth to explain why, in this case, some movies that are traditionally viewed in very positive terms, as in fact very bad. The one that I am going to discuss now is "21 Terrible Baby Boomer Movies" from topixstars.com. I am not one who generally makes a point of reading or listening to movie reviews, although sometimes I have. And at the risk of sounding old-fashioned myself, some of the reviewers who most impressed me included Siskel and Ebert because...well, they actually could sound intelligent when reviewing movies. They provided in depth analysis and explanations as to what made a movie moving, or why it was not as good as it should be.
However, this website, or at least this particular article or piece or whatever you want to call it, lacks any kind of serious intelligence to it. Frankly, it sounded more like a kid who is whining about having to read classics or do any kind of serious learning in school, and texting complaints about it to a friend (or anyone who will listen to, or rather read, this nonsense), rather than serious discourse and critiques about the movies that he or she rants about.
I can agree with some of the negatives. Grease always annoyed the hell out of me, as did Saturday Night Fever and, yes, Animal House. I can even admit that certain movies that I loved growing up when a kid, like Revenge of the Nerds, can make this list. To some extent, I can even agree that certain movies, like The Sound of Music and even The Godfather, tend to be overrated, because people put them on such a high pedestal, that they make it feel like these movies are untouchable.
One movie that makes this list is Dances With Wolves. This is a great movie, and I do not know literally anyone who has seen it who did not like it. It was the first major motion picture that seemed to seriously challenge everything that most people had largely accepted about western expansion by whites, with this expansion finally being portrayed accurately for what it was, a criminal intrusion. Also, it is just a nice (if overly idealistic) story, and the movie was beautifully made. Yet, the author of this piece claims that it ranks as one of the "21 Terrible Baby Boomer Movies," even though literally the only explanation that this author gives are rants about Kevin Costner's career. Nothing about this movie, specifically, or the other actors in it, which seems to me like this author was just trying to be witty and to sound funny or have shock value, at the expense of intelligent and serious discourse on the merits, or lack thereof, of this and other movies.
Let's take one of the movies that this clown took exception to: 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie revolutionized special effects, and it asked all sorts of questions about our society, and about where our reliance on technology is going. Also, it has to be remembered that it should be judged, at least on some level, within the contest of the time it came out. Nothing like it had come out before, which made it unique, and allowed it to enjoy a privileged place as such, kind of like the first Star Wars. Yet, whoever the idiot is who wrote this judges it on the other movies that have come out since, when special effects and similar story lines (gee, I wonder where they got their ideas?) have become quite numerous.
Another example of this would be Forest Gump. This is a great movie. It literally changed special effects, and takes the viewer on a two-hour tour of almost every American era from the 1950's through the late 1970's and even a bit into the early 1980's. Perhaps the author of this piece was too young, not surprisingly.
Also, how can Forest Gump be a "baby boomer" movie, when it came out in 1994, literally 35 years after the very first movie on this list, Some Like it Hot, which came out in 1959? And this is not even the most extreme, Shakespeare in Love, which came out in 1998 and was quite good, also makes the list, and that came out almost 40 years after Some Like it Hot! And Crash came out in 2004, fully 45 years after the first movie on this list? How can all of these movies be the fault of the baby boomer generation, when they are literally more than two generations apart, and address radically different subject matter, and are done in radically different styles? I know that many people criticize the younger generations for not taking education seriously and all, but have math skills deteriorated so greatly that 45 years is considered the same generation? I am guessing that these are the movies that, according to this author, baby boomers rave about, rather than created, because again, a span of almost half a century is a little too long for any generation to take sole responsibility for.
The English Patient is criticized as being the most boring movie ever. Yes, because movies with constant, endless explosions and special effects, all at the expense of a coherent story line, are just sooooo fascinating, right? I mean, Michael Bay's Transformers (pick whichever one you want of those movies) is just the height of mindless entertainment, huh? Commentary like this seems to me to be the reason that we are edging
The author takes exception to Clockwork Orange because it is "used as an excuse for their horribleness since 1971."
What does that even mean? And how is that supposed to be a critique of the movie itself, and what it is trying to convey?
Seriously, this was idiotic. I am not even sure why I decided to click on it, since my gut feeling was that it was going to be exactly this kind of a website, with exactly this kind of intellectually and emotionally immature nonsense. Frankly, it felt like I lost some brain cells just by reading this garbage.
21 Terrible Baby Boomer Movies
Just came across the click-bait ad generator myself and had the exact same reaction, and I'm not even a baby boomer. What's wrong with Some Like it Hot? Men dressed in drag isn't funny, and the movie offers nothing else. First of all, I could almost agree with the author if he/she had said that Curtis and Lemmon dressed in drag was the least funny element of the movie, but that's hardly all the movie offers us. Every little bit of business, like one of the goons saying, "We was at Rigalettos," the band leader screaming, "Beanstalk," the old cop picking up the gangster's hearing aid and speaking directly into it, or the old drunk crying out for more "coffee," cracks me up every time, and those aren't even the actual jokes or one-liners in the movie. I can't force a reviewer to like a movie, no matter how good it is, but I can certainly expect them to have actually watched it, and I can't trust that the author has. I love Apocalypse Now, but how in god's name does it have a more "cogent narrative" than the Godfather or any other Coppola film, especially when you add in the plantation scene? Is he confusing the Godfather with Once Upon a Time in America? It's truly a baffling list, and if it wasn't for the fact that it makes them money the more we read it, I'd suggest reading it again for a good laugh.
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