We look at ten once-hated films that have been shown more affection in recent years and ask, do they deserve the newfound love?
It’s a story as old as cinema time. A film comes out greeted with a vitriolic response from critics and audiences. In time we’ve seen the likes of Citizen Kane, The Shining and Blade Runner quickly turn from being considered bloated bombs to being heralded as masterpieces.
Sometimes that reappraisal takes a few years, other times a decade or two. With that in mind, it’s time to look at 10 films from the ’90s and beyond, which were hated upon release only to have been reappraised in years since.
From cinema’s ugly ducklings to glorious swans, even if a newfound love might come with a side order of ironic praise. The question is, do all these films deserve their reappraisals? Let’s take a look…
Constantine
Keanu Reeves had left The Matrix behind, when Constantine was released. In theory, this big-budget horror/fantasy loosely based on the DC comic Hellblazer could have launched a franchise.
Though the film did reasonable numbers, it was greeted with a dire critical reception and apathetic audience response for the most part. However, a small selection of fans who vibed with an eclectic mix of styles ahead of its time managed to keep a candle burning for Constantine.
The cult following grew and the clamour for a sequel that Warner initially would have felt was like throwing bundles of cash straight into an incinerator, reached a point where it’s now close to happening.
How warranted was the reappraisal? Constantine has greatly benefited from the personality-free drudgery that the MCU and DC production line has become. The Marvel formula, initially so effective, became oversaturated, lazy and dull. Constantine feels like a unique beast and Reeves with his understated performance as a hard-bitten, almost Bogart-style exorcist, has one of his more interesting characters who deserves another run in the rumoured sequel.
Showgirls
Ah Showgirls. Rarely has a film hit the screens with such a profile and expectation, only to be greeted with such frothing vitriol or unrelenting mickey-taking. Showgirls managed to anger as many people as its deemed abjectness entertained. This butt of jokes effectively derailed the career of Elizabeth Berkley who was also savaged by critics for her histrionic performance.
Slowly, a cult following began to grow and spawn. Firstly, Showgirls found some acclaim for being a kitschy and outrageously camp experience that overcame its obvious flaws. However, the reappraisal has grown further with many now able to tune into Paul Verhoeven’s vision. You might think it’s overacted to the nth degree with ludicrous dialogue and situations, but this was all intentional.
Beneath the camp and kitsch is something of a fierce satire of the Hollywood machine. Upon reappraising myself I’ve seen more and more merits to how dialled up and restraint-free Berkley’s performance is. It fits her character perfectly.
Perhaps it was so on the nose it almost saw its message blind the audience to the point of missing it. It’s far from a masterpiece but Showgirls deserves its newfound appreciation.
Johnny Mnemonic
Another Keanu adaptation was hammered upon release by fans and critics alike. It had lukewarm box office but in many ways would warm Reeves up for his sci-fi action fusion journey into The Matrix a few years later.
Johnny Mnemonic’s odd mixture of tones and strange creative choices in a film centred on a data courier transporting vital information in his brain, drew plenty of scorn. There’s a psychic dolphin in it, part of a resistance band led by Ice-T. Yeah, the film is batshit and Keanu Reeves is all overacted wild gesticulations crossed with almost reactionless stoicism, depending on the shot.
Many have grown to appreciate the quirks of the film in an age where fans have been far more accepting of quirky sci-fi/fantasy movies with broadly stroked characters. Likewise, many of the technological ideas are intriguing and have in some cases made the film prescient.
Indeed one of the biggest movements that helped Johnny Mnemonic find more love was a rise in popularity around 10-15 years ago, of the cyberpunk aesthetic and the rising steampunk movement. It’s not perfect, but it has a unique charm that fans are now picking up on.
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
George Lucas’ long-awaited return to directing and a long wait of 16 years after the previous Star Wars outing, saw The Phantom Menace arrive at the end of the century backed by feverish anticipation.
Of course, the film was a runaway financial success and was followed up by two more prequels. However, most of the fans who grew up watching the original trilogy hated The Phantom Menace with a burning passion. It became a figure of both vitriolic and comical scorn.
Then Disney took over Star Wars and pretty quickly created the wrong kind of cult. A cult of perennially enraged fanboys who started to hate everything that Disney Star Wars was creating. Every casting choice that wasn’t an original cast member, or white male, was dissected for its “obvious wokeness.”
The fans certainly have a point when it comes to the diminishing quality of all things Star Wars. With the odd exception like Andor and a couple of seasons of The Mandalorian, it’s been largely awful to watch. This in turn has led to a newfound appreciation of the Star Wars prequels. Warranted?
In all cases, definitely not, The Phantom Menace was terrible. It was a podrace and a well-choreographed lightsaber fight sandwiched among dull and lifeless settings, flat dialogue and even flatter performances. It was terrible then, and it’s still terrible, it’s just less egregious than The Rise of Skywalker and The Book of Boba Fett.
Last Action Hero
Arnold was on top of the tower. Terminator 2 was a mega hit which aside from being one of the greatest action movies ever made, was also a box office behemoth. Then came Last Action Hero which saw him spoof his image, whilst simultaneously leading a huge budget action spectacular, helmed by John McTiernan.
So it’s the King of Action with a director probably second only to James Cameron in that genre at that time. It had a script by Shane Black too. It couldn’t fail, right? Well, it did. Although the box office numbers were impressive by most metrics, this was being measured against T2. Likewise, critics were not kind. A bunch of rewrites and changes from Black’s drafts left a Frankenstein monster of a film with strange tonal and logic shifts.
As with some of the other films on this list though, irreverence and logic lapses are all the rage in modern blockbuster cinema. It was once mercilessly mocked across other movies, shows and more as a down point in Arnold’s career, but is now a firm favourite. The thing with Last Action Hero, is that even with those inconsistencies it’s brilliant. It works as a comedy, as a kid’s fantasy, as a dad’s action movie and as a great showcase of Arnie in his prime.
Freddy Got Fingered
Remember when Tom Green and his brand of comedy was a thing? The TV prankster became a movie star, beginning as a supporting artist in films like Charlie’s Angels and Road Trip before getting to be the main man in Freddy Got Fingered.
The film was deemed one of the most atrocious comedies of all time by critics. A misfiring vanity project that represented the nadir of Hollywood creativity. We’d seen new comedy prospects rise and fall very quickly over the years when their particular shtick grew tiresome (Carrot Top, Pauly Shore, etc) but Green for many was aggressively unfunny.
So critics hated the film, branding it repugnant and fans weren’t all that much kinder. Not many people turned up to watch it on the big screen and it became obvious that Green’s brand at best was suited for small roles or straight-to-video projects.
In the rise of meme and vine culture though, Freddy Got Fingered took on a new lease of life with sequences and moments segmented and greeted with genuine laughs (daddy would you like some sausages). The modern audience had a stronger stomach for the shock factor and a taste for the bizarre and inane, which Green delivered perfectly.
Does the film as a whole deserve reappraisal as a cult favourite? Well…no, not really. It’s still a chore to get through, even if some moments are utterly (entertainingly) ridiculous and Green so unabashed and aggressive in his attempts to mine a laugh.
Batman & Robin
Batman & Robin arrived in cinemas as one of the big movies of 1997 but was brutalised by critics and fans. Batnips and buttocks and a horribly miscast George Clooney were the least of the issues with a film that just threw way too much at the screen. Characters wandered in, seemingly from different movies. I was an almighty mess.
Then around 10 years ago, blockbusters began to change. Suddenly audiences with (in the eyes of distributors) a much shorter attention span loved the monkey flings its shit at the wall approach to movie making. An array of big-budget behemoths were now going scattershot and also cranking up the goofy humour. It doesn’t always work and even Taika Waititi has had mixed success with his two Thor adventures.
Has Batman & Robin aged well and found its era? Yes and no. As a so bad it’s good cluster-fudge of epic proportions, it kind of works. As a film with legitimate and newfound redeeming values, it certainly doesn’t.
Jennifer’s Body
Megan Fox washing a sports car was the making of her but almost at the exact same time, the breaking. She was huge after Transformers but her infamy was born of an image Michael Bay’s camera helped to craft. The souring relationship and her being binned from the franchise meant she had to find new projects to try and capitalise on her fame.
Not long after she starred in Jennifer’s Body which played on her image and commented on the sexualisation of young women. A pitch-dark, feminist comedy horror written by Diablo Cody (Juno) and directed by Karyn Kusama.
Critics hated it. Audiences (those who actually watched it) didn’t really get it, but the film has gathered an ever-increasing appreciation in a more pro-feminist world. Megan Fox never gets much praise as an actress and when it comes she’s almost damned with faint praise, but she’s great in this and almost a step ahead of the audience of 2009. A decade on and people were finger-snapping and appreciating the film. It’s a lot of fun and if you pay attention it does say something.
It was an about-turn for Cody, one of the hottest writers in Hollywood off the back of winning an Oscar for her debut, Juno. It’s totally and utterly not the kind of sophomore you expect from an Oscar-winning debutant, but you know what? Jennifer’s Body will have a longer legacy than Juno.
Super Mario Bros
Video game adaptations have always been contentious. It’s so rare that they’ve been done right on the big screen and so many of these films have often stepped away from the game’s visual iconography.
Super Mario Bros, stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi respectively were deemed as egregious casting choices in both cases. The film, which riffed on Blade Runner almost more than the original video game bore little resemblance to the Mario IP fans grew up on, whether it was his original 8-Bit guise or Saturday morning cartoons.
The film came out, it bombed and fans detested it. In time fans have warmed slightly to the doofy misadventures of their favourite video game characters played by miscast actors.
There is certainly much to enjoy about Super Mario Bros, not least Dennis Hopper devouring scenery and the seeming awkwardness of Hoskins starring in a film he clearly knew was a piece of shit. It looks impressive, with a decent wedge spent on sets and bold designs. It is nothing like what you’d expect of a Mario movie. Some feel it’s an enjoyable romp that was just misunderstood. I’m on the fence on this one.
The Chronicles of Riddick
Before Dominic Toretto and his penchant for souped-up cars, Vin Diesel-powered Richard B Riddick in Pitch Black. The first in the Riddickverse and still far and away the best. It never felt like something that might spawn a franchise, video games, animations and comic strips but it did.
The truth is, Riddick has never been more effective than being an anti-hero antagonist of ambiguous motives, dropped into a film following the Aliens formula. Still, Pitch Black had a cult following and Diesel and creator, David Twohy had grand plans.
Unexpectedly, and in the wake of the success of The Lord of the Rings and the revival of Star Wars, we got The Chronicles of Riddick which took our antihero into a fusion of those two influences in the hope of starting a franchise with its own unique world. Diesel and Twohy teased such concepts as the underverse and began world-building with ideas that were sometimes flimsily touched upon. They were probably sketching ideas to be solidified across 2-3 more movies but due to the film tanking, never were.
Likewise, it never sat right with critics who thought the whole thing was guff. Yet looking back at this flawed opus, there’s a lot to appreciate (possibly because blockbusters have become more hollow since).
The film has some memorable set pieces, thrusting Diesel into some nicely set-up threats, even if the delivery of is plagued with excessive stylistic choices. The film’s payoff is effective. I think this has aged well and there as continuous rumours of Riddick’s return rage here’s hoping we go back to a wider and more interesting universe, especially now we’re in an era where everyone wants to world build.
Which films do you think deserve to be reappraised? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe