Top 10 Most Overrated “Cool” Movies Of The Last 10 Years

Every year there are cool movies. Some are huge mega-blockbusters; some are art house flicks that become cult classics. Some are really, really, amazing movies. And then there are these movies. Movies that aren’t really bad, they just aren’t as good as the fan boys in frat houses they’ve collected over the last 10 years would have you believe. These are the 10 most overrated “cool” movies of the last 10 years (In order of overratedness)

Fight club scene10. Fight Club – 8.8 IMDB rating (18th highest all time)

Fight Club just had it’s 10-year anniversary a few weeks ago and it is the oldest movie on this list. Fight Club is a cool movie, with a cool twist in it (even if you see it coming a mile away), but it isn’t the great social commentary that everyone wants it to be. People love it when movies have gratuitous violence, and they love it even more when it has some sort of meaning. Fight Club delivers on that, but it falls short when it tries to pick apart the order of society with its little hidden facts.

It works in the world of the story but most people watching it forget that they are watching a fictional story and actually believe it when Tyler Durden tells The Narrator about the crash procedures on commercial flights. Yeah, that’s not true. (And the 18th greatest movie ever!? I don’t think so.)

Snatch screenshot

9. Snatch – 8.2 IMDB rating (#139 highest all time)

Here is an example of a movie that replaces substance with style and not nearly enough people notice. There are a lot of things to like about Snatch. It has a fun story that moves quickly, a lot of funny little characters, probably Jason Statham's best role before The Bank Job.

But what is wrong with it you ask? Well, the real star of movie is the way it is shot, which would be fine, if it didn’t look like it was shot by a crack addict with so much dope in his veins that he is five seconds away from dropping dead. But it does. And if you can discern some sort of coherency between all of the inter-cutting then you’d also notice that there are way too many cameo roles in this movie. Like college kids jammed into a phone booth, just when you think they are done stuffing one more big name actor playing an underdeveloped character that dies after about five minutes of screen time in there, they shove one more in.

Episode 3

8. Episode III – 7.9 IMDB rating

Star Wars’ third….er… sixth installment’s popularity is all just a big misunderstanding. You see, what actually happened is that Star Wars Episode II sucked. Hard. Episode II is one of the most painfully bad pieces of cinema you can actually sit and watch today. Text - Everyone was so used to star wars being terrible The special effects suck, the acting sucks, the script sucks, the story sucks, the characters suck. So naturally when Episode III came out and it wasn’t a heaping pile of steaming giraffe poo, everyone cheered. Think of it like the reverse of Spider Man 3 or The Matrix sequals.

Everyone was so used to seeing Star Wars be a horrible disappointment, that when it wasn’t, everyone thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I’ve even heard some people try and say it is better than Return of the Jedi. I implore those individuals to recall the awesomeness they witnessed the first time they watched the space battle at the end of the true third Star Wars movie.

megan fox movies

7. Megan Fox – Not a movie, but she is always in the top 5 for popular people on IMDB

Yeah, Megan Fox is hot. In that slutty, trashy, girl you meet at a bar and bang next to a dumpster behind that same bar, when she asks why you haven’t took her to meet your parents you tell her your parents are dead because you would rather kill them than let them ever see that you are dating this girl kind of way. But everyone needs to calm the eff down about her being so hot.

I’m not saying I would turn her down, but she is kind of a twig in terms of body and has a lot of tattoos. Which is like playing Russian Roulette with your body; you’re going to get an ugly one at some point. Oh yeah, and she can’t act and seems like she might be a total bitch — that's just what I've heard.

300 movie

6. 300 – 7.8 IMDB rating

Now we are starting to get into those movies that I have real problems with. Maybe I’m rating this a little high on the overrated scale (after all, it does get mocked pretty regularly), but I can’t help myself. Did anyone else watch this movie and think, “Wow, these Spartan guys are pricks. Don’t really feel bad that they’re all gonna die at the end of this.” They walk around in slow motion for 2+ hours acting like they’re better than everyone else and then we are supposed to be bummed when they all get killed?

Not to mention the way they effortlessly throw all historical accuracy to the wayside. And how about all of the bogus creatures they just pull out of their asses? That Persian… err, guy, with the crab arms? Pretty sure he didn’t ever exist. But really, you could just watch this segment of Rifftrax, and they say pretty much everything I am thinking.

Boondock saints movie

5. The Boondock Saints – 7.9 IMDB rating

If there is any movie that subscribes to the mantra “style over substance,” oh man, is The Boondock Saints that flick. This movie is pretty fun to watch, for a Tarantino knockoff with utterly implausible action sequences. Just turn off our brain and enjoy. Easier said than done apparently.

This movie has ridden its Irish-Catholic mystique all the way into the cult action pantheon. But that’s all it is, mystique. A layer of “cool” paint over an otherwise ho-hum action movie with unoriginal/underdeveloped characters and plot. The sequel is out right now, go on ahead and see it for a good time action movie, just don’t expect more than that.

Requiem for a dream movie

4. Requiem for a Dream – 8.5 IMDB rating (62nd highest all time)

Don’t do drugs! That pretty much sums this one up. What is good about this movie? The acting, Jennifer Connelly’s incredible hotness, and an awesome soundtrack that would later be made even more awesome when Lord of the Rings got a hold of it. But that is it my friends.

When you make a movie that is meant to be taken as seriously as this one here, you need to make it realistic. Is drug addiction a serious problem that can destroy a person’s life? Yes. Can diet pills make you hallucinate so that you think your refrigerator is going to eat you? I’m going to be generous and say probably not. Also, this movie features one of the most incredible “coincidental” stolen scenes I’ve ever seen or heard of (see Dark City).

Joker  in dark knight

3. Dark Knight – 8.9 IMDB rating (8th highest all time)

Let me make something totally clear: I like this movie — a lot. I saw it in theaters and thought it was awesome just like everyone else. I was shocked that it wasn’t nominated for best picture last year. Then something happened, I saw it again.

The movie still had everything that was great about it; Heath Ledger, great action, suspense, drama, but it also had about a million little plot holes and lapses in logic that were just enough for me to start a one-man “The Dark Knight really isn’t THAT awesome” crusade.

No sequence in the movie suffers more under scrutiny than when The Joker escapes from the interrogation room. First of all, what is that cop standing guard even in the room for, doesn’t the door lock from the outside? Then after he gets his ass kicked in what must have been three seconds (wasn’t anyone watching through the glass?), he comes out and they give The Joker the phone and he blows up the bomb and poof, every single cop is gone. Not dead, not on the floor writhing in pain, they’re just magically gone. Except of course for The Joker who is still standing in the middle of the room, what!?

I could go on; the whole sequence with them trying to protect Wayne’s accountant makes NO sense, same goes for the logic behind Gordon faking his own death, but you get the point.

I still think the movie is cool. I like watching it, but its flaws are enough to keep me from drooling over it and certainly enough to keep me from thinking it is one of the ten greatest movies ever.

District 9

2. District 9 – 8.4 IMDB rating (90th highest all time)

This movie is bullshit. Alright, it is still a very recent release so I will be kind and try to avoid revealing any specifics about the movie in this critique. But I hate this movie. Not at first, at first I was only mildly put off by it, but then at around the time that the 5th or 6th body exploded I decided, “Wow, this is retarded.”

Part of it is my fault. I thought I was going into it to see a realistic alternate-reality, Sci-fi, docu-drama about aliens living in poverty on earth. The chances for social commentary are endless here. What did I get? A ridiculous, over the top, gore filled, suck fest. Want more? Well I hope so, cause I’m not about to stop. Deus ex machina. This movie uses them like they’ll be illegal to use the next day. After one or two you say, “okay, you gotta keep it going somehow.” But after the 5th or 6th completely out of nowhere solution to a problem to keep the movie going you got to start thinking, “what the hell?”.

Not including the most illogical moment in a movie I have ever seen, in which one character hits another with a piece of wood for the sole purpose of extending the movie another 20 minutes! If you don’t believe me, go on ahead and ask me to elaborate further, please, I’d love to! Oh man, this one sucks.

The departed

1. The Departed – 8.5 IMDB rating (50th highest all time)

Martin Scorcese is one of the all time great directors. He’s made some absolutely great movies: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Good Fellas. Then he made The Departed. Which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards as a sort of lifetime achievement (at least I think so).

The movie is decent. But the plot is even more ridiculous than Jack Nicholson’s performance and filled with more holes than his body by the end of it. Why doesn’t the Chinese Mob come after Nicholson’s gang after he completely rips them off by giving them fake computer chips or whatever the hell they were after (anyone else notice this)? But my real problem with this movie is the ending. Have you ever seen the episode of South Park where they pretend to be cops? It is called Lil’ Crime Stoppers and it is from season 7. It has the exact same ending as this movie, only it is hilarious on purpose. But who am I to judge. Maybe you like your movies to have a good double-double-cross in which tertiary characters come out of nowhere in the last five minutes and kill major characters because it is time for the movie to end. My advice: see Infernal Affairs, the movie on which it is based. It is about 30 minutes shorter and the ending is waaaaay better.

(dis)Honorable Mentions

Transformers – 7.4 IMDB – Michael Bay raped my childhood.

Donnie Darko – 8.3 IMDB (#124 all time) – This movie came out nine years ago, and to this day no one has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that makes sense.

Kevin MacLean

Kevin H. MacLean currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where he enjoys people watching, writing, and dominating all comers in four-square. You can keep tabs on him at his blog http://ratedwrong.com/.