Million Dollar Baby: overrated

Agent Orange · 06-03-2005 5:36pm #1

In my opinion this film is vastly overrated. It didn't deserve to be nominated for Best Picture, let alone win it.

Morgan Freeman didn't deserve to win an Oscar for his role. Either did Hillary Swank. I'm not saying they were bad... but come on, these were the best performances of the year?

Yet everyone is raving about it. Is it just me? I feel like how I felt after I saw 'In America'. Everyone was going on about what a great film it was yet I thought it was the most clichéd, cringeworthy rubbish I'd seen that year.

Am I alone here?

sailorboy · 06-03-2005 5:42pm

in my mind...best film of the year
eastwood exelent comeback movie. soundtrack fantastic and the emotion he showed. up there with bridges of madison and
unforgiven performance wise.

anthonymcg · 06-03-2005 6:43pm

sailorboy wrote:

soundtrack fantastic

Don't agree with ya on that man, I thought the soundtrack was the worst I've heard in a long while. Didn't sit comfortably with the film at all and its obvious that Clint should have left it to the pros.

Elessar · 06-03-2005 6:55pm

I would agree. It was an interesting story but I was very disappointed with this film overall. It certainly didnt deserve any Oscars.

Clint's character was the only interesting one. We weren't allowed to get closer/more intimate with the others. As a result this film had no impact on me whatsoever.

I think its time for Clint to move back to westerns!

Chinafoot · 06-03-2005 9:22pm

Eastwood certainly is untouchable of late.

Found this one to be a lot like Mystic River.......self-indulgent and over-acted.

Mr E · 06-03-2005 11:00pm

Didn't like Mystic River, but loved Million Dollar Baby. Second best movie I've seen this year (after sideways).

Clint and Swank were great. Didn't think Morgan Freeman did much, though...

pickarooney · 06-03-2005 11:03pm

It was OK, nothing special and poorly researched. Farcical oscar wins, but that's nothing new.

thafitz · 07-03-2005 2:53pm

it was a good film but definitely not the best film of the year. i agree with you on morgan freeman, he was barely in it.

I am MAN · 07-03-2005 2:54pm

Put this DVD on last night fell asleep just over half way through it, very boring film that I believe to be overrated too.

RE*AC*TOR · 07-03-2005 2:56pm

This is a hugely overrated film. Eastwood doesn't do it for me as a director. As for Morgan Freeman its the kind of role he can shít-out at a moments notice. Then again it continues the trend of the Oscars more-or-less always picking the wrong horse - what can you expect from a mostly geriatric academy though/

sleepwalker · 08-03-2005 12:56am

i thought it was great myself and i went into the film with fairly low expectations

whats self indulgent about the film and why is it poorly researched ?

sideways deserved the best picture but id say million dollar baby was just behind it and im glad eastwood got best director at least he seems to have recovered from the horror of "Space Cowboys"

TwoShedsJackson · 08-03-2005 10:50am

Agent Orange wrote:

In my opinion this film is vastly overrated. It didn't deserve to be nominated for Best Picture, let alone win it.

Morgan Freeman didn't deserve to win an Oscar for his role. Either did Hillary Swank. I'm not saying they were bad... but come on, these were the best performances of the year?

Yet everyone is raving about it. Is it just me? I feel like how I felt after I saw 'In America'. Everyone was going on about what a great film it was yet I thought it was the most clichéd, cringeworthy rubbish I'd seen that year.

Am I alone here?

Your not alone in thinking 'In America' was a load of sentimental ****e, anyway. As for Million Dollar Baby, I though it was superb. What performances last year were better than Hillary Swank's if you thought she didn't deserve it?

pickarooney · 08-03-2005 11:12am

Nathalie Portman in Closer, for one, though it was generally a dreadful year for actresses.

The whole boxing scenario in MDB was a joke. The idea of a boxer consistently punching an opponent in the head when she's lying on the ground and getting away with it is ridiculous, likewise the elbows in the head under the eye of the ref.

The Irish-language bits made no sense either. Why would you give your fighter a name whose meaning you don't know, then not bother to find it out for years and years? And they seemed to be suggesting that Yeats wrote the Lake Isle of Inishfree in Irish.
These kind of things take two minutes to find out, but they just didn't bother.

simu · 08-03-2005 12:42pm

pickarooney wrote:

The Irish-language bits made no sense either. Why would you give your fighter a name whose meaning you don't know, then not bother to find it out for years and years? And they seemed to be suggesting that Yeats wrote the Lake Isle of Inishfree in Irish.

Isn't that realistic, though? Many Irish-Americans do mix up Irish info quite a bit.

Haket · 08-03-2005 12:59pm

> The Irish-language bits made no sense either. Why would you give your fighter a name whose >meaning you don't know, then not bother to find it out for years and years?

I thought the whole point was he did know (as he could read irish) but didnt want to tell her (and show his affection for her) . . . .

Thought it was an "ok" movie, but certanly not the best film category, and Eastwood certanly lived up to previous wooden performances, although he has softened in recent flicks (took him 50 years though !).

Fence · 08-03-2005 1:40pm

If it hadn't have been hyped so much then MDB could be regarded as an okay film, but what with everyone raving about it being fantastic it has slipped further down, imo.

It was totally unoriginal, almost every boxing cliche possible was there, and the Morgan Freeman character should have gotten an award for most boring speeches in film-history.

As for the Irish, if I hadn't heard that Clint was supposed to speak Irish I wouldn't have recognised his yeats, and has anyone given a reason why he was reading Yeats in Irish?? Not to mention the mo cuisle bit, which the got wrong. Spelt it wrong first of all, and it should have been a cuisle, not mo.

All in all, I don't think this was worth watching. And if you are tempted to read the short story collection by FX Toole I'd recommend starting with Rope Burns

projectmayhem · 08-03-2005 5:40pm

it was a pretty bad, and boring film.

the oscar for morgan freeman wasn't really for this role per se, rather a pat on the back for his career work.

dawballz · 08-03-2005 6:54pm

Agent Orange wrote:

In my opinion this film is vastly overrated. It didn't deserve to be nominated for Best Picture, let alone win it.

Morgan Freeman didn't deserve to win an Oscar for his role. Either did Hillary Swank. I'm not saying they were bad... but come on, these were the best performances of the year?

Yet everyone is raving about it. Is it just me? I feel like how I felt after I saw 'In America'. Everyone was going on about what a great film it was yet I thought it was the most clichéd, cringeworthy rubbish I'd seen that year.

Am I alone here?

Yeah there was a lot of hype over In America and I went to see that and it was the worst film I saw last year. Hence I won't even bother to rent MDB out when it comes out, let alone go see it..

Million Dollar Baby: overrated

Comments