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Most Overrated Films of 2014

2014 is clearly one of the best years ever for cinema, but even the greatest years have their stinkers (see that list here) and also their overrated frustrations. For this list, I chose only the most praised and renowned movies in terms of box office, reviews and awards wins, but films that either did not appeal to me or that I found to be far from great.

5. Big Hero 6

As a big fan of their movies, it pains me to put a Disney film on this list, but I have to as Big Hero 6 got very strong reviews and it fared so well at the box office, but is in actuality one of the studio’s weakest efforts in this decade. The animation is wonderful, the voice acting is excellent and the movie has a big heart in its sleeves, but it also has an unoriginal story with the twist being particularly uninspired. The main characters were solid, but the huge cast of supporting players got the short end of the stick in terms of development. It’s a messy, rushed movie.

4. American Sniper

And the worst movie of 2014 is also one of the most overrated – American Sniper. This horrendous pro-war propaganda is all about American military supremacy, being pretty much racist and xenophobic in its messaging. It’s the type of film that only the more patriotic and nationalistic Americans can like and nobody else. It’s the only film of 2014 that I genuinely hated and I find it to be dangerous in its rhetoric. It’s pure evil and it somehow got strong reviews, so it deserves this spot here as well as on my worst movies of this year list too.

3. The Lego Movie

This is the second animated movie on this list, which only showcases that this year had some films in the animation medium that were overly praised, especially when compared to other much stronger works in the medium – ‘When Marnie Was There’ and ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ for instance are much better than The Lego Movie. I did like this film’s exceptionally funny dialogue, strong animation and amusing parodic elements, but it simply never got to explore its vast, interesting world owing to extremely excessive action and frantic pacing.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel got numerous Oscar nominations and is often regarded as one of Wes Anderson’s best films. But I have never been the fan of this guy and this was certainly the case here as well. The flick is strange for the sake of being strange while the plot, characterization and meaning are nowhere to be found. The production design, costumes and score are all lovely, but most of its great actors were reduced to what is basically a cameo and the strong visual style led to the overwhelming clutter and denseness.

1. Birdman

And the most obvious number one pick for this list has to be the Best Picture winner Birdman. Its one-take approach at cinematography simply felt forced more than once. Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ did it way better. Edward Norton and Emma Stone are both excellent whereas Michael Keaton gave his career-greatest performance in this role that was pretty much made for him. I did like its themes a lot, but it only touches the surface and rarely truly explores them. The movie is admirably ambitious, but wildly uneven in execution. I would have been fine with this film had it not won an Oscar, especially not over the brilliant ‘Boyhood’.

Honorable Mentions:

Citizenfour – Citizenfour is of course very relevant and incredibly important to watch and it has some thought-provoking and quite interesting things to say, but it is never as interesting or as intriguing as it should have been and it is not particularly well made. It’s a solid doc, but nothing more than that.

Foxcatcher – Foxcatcher is only worth seeing for the terrific performances from Tatum, Carell and Ruffalo, all three delivering some of their best work to date. But other than that, this is a very slow, tedious and frustratingly suffocating film in its overbearingly dark and monotonous tone that rendered it lifeless and dull.

What We Do in the Shadows – What We Do in the Shadows is a highly original, but uneven experiment. Its mix of genres and approaches is very intriguing as it is a mockumentary vampire horror comedy with a pretty good premise, but only the second act is very strong and quite funny as it takes time to get used to its weirdness and it loses its steam in the third act.