Been awhile since we've done this thread, and it's always fun. Here are some of my picks:
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The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) is really bad. Will Smith's inspirational moment is going to the New York Stock Exchange and seeing all the happy rich guys in suits walking around, and wanting to be like them. Having to do stuff like brown-nose executives, sleep in train station bathrooms and pull his son out of daycare due to lack of money are presented not as flaws of the system but evidence of Smith's smart bootstraps-oriented thinking. This movie is the Mein Kampf of liberalism.
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Air (2023) is really bad too. Literally a feature-length Nike commercial coupled with a fuckton of Michael Jordan worship, the message being that a bunch of rich guys deserved to get even richer because they signed a sneaker deal. The closing 5 minutes of the movie are a "where are they now" montage showing how much money all the Nike executives made, yay!
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Anastasia (1997), which portrays the Russian Revolution as the result of a wizard's curse and communism as bad because it got in the way of the Romanovs living in big palaces and wearing fancy dresses.
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The Post (2017), about a wealthy, heroic girlboss newspaper executive who makes the heroic decision to...uhh...not block the publication of a story that would expose the lies of a corrupt president threatening our democracy (take THAT drumpf)
post more.
Forest Gump for sure. I say it every time this topic comes up.
It's weird how everyone seems to like this movie even though it is so bad
I like Matt Christman's theory: Forrest was lying folks, he was literally just making shit up on that dumb bench to fuck with people. (this theory will also get people very angry for some reason)
Criticizing liberals’ soothing thought-terminating treats is a cardinal sin
Thought that was Stavs theory.
Does make everything that happens after he leaves the bench kinda weird though.
Stav was more just confused that he ran across the country without stopping.
Yeah but he was specifically asking if forest was an unreliable narrator or not, cuz Stav can't buy that a person could run a lot.
He thought that the film must be magic for that to happen. Which ngl I don't disagree with his all or nothing stance with magic in film.
The funny thing is I think his question was totally reasonable, he just worded it in the dumbest way possible
That is Stavi embodied in one sentence
90s nostalgia is a powerful thing. The movie should be dunked on based on them creating an awful seafood chain alone.
That existed prior to the movie
Bubba Gump Shrimp Co did not exist prior to Forrest Gump lmao
I mean it can a well made movie even if the message is bad and encased in liberalism. Same with the Will Smith flim mentioned in the original post.
Though it's been a long time since I watched either, so I can't give an accurate judgement on why these movies are well liked despite the end messages being bad. Maybe people are just trapped in liberalism and therefore relate to it? That's all I've got for now.
idk i'm not even talking about the message of it, it's just so fucking lazy. 2.5 hours of "member this" and referencing historical events with Forrest inserted on the sideline, with nothing really connecting each dot. Like they didn't even try to come up with a plot or an antagonist or any type of stakes to care about the meandering random unconnected bullshit
there is absolutely a plot. the emotional core of the movie is Forrest's unconditional, unfaltering love for Jenny in the face of her pain and self destruction. Not that that plot is without its problems, but more than the nostalgia bait, it's what makes the movie watchable.
Jenny isn't in 90% of the movie, only the opening and ending. She's barely even a character
That’s also not true she is sprinkled in through the movie. That being said she’s basically used as a prop to demonize the entire counter culture of the era and she ends up dying because of it. She’s like the boomer cautionary tale personified.
Forest Gump wasn’t the least enjoyable thing to watch. Pursuit of Happiness had way too many brain worms to ignore though.
My Jr High principle sent out a newsletter to parents telling them to watch it
The only bad guy was the anti-war protestor.
Someone should make a movie about the Ukrainian nazi that was celebrated in the Canadian parliament, but he should be presented as a Forest Gump character that just happens to be at all of the worst events of the holocaust and has absolutely no understanding of what's happening.
I think its fair to say that it has a lot of impressive technical work and good acting (I'm a sucker for movies that blend practical and computer generated effects well), but I always found the message to be liberalism.
I take it as, you can succeed at anything no matter how difficult if you're just a good person and simply being an American gives you the opportunities to do this. If you don't, it means you're a bad person and didn't deserve it or didnt work hard enough. Pretty terrible message if you ask me
This was the first movie i thought of too.