The Most Boring Movies You've Ever Seen

(Blair Witch skeered me!)

I avoided As Good As Its Gets for two years, due to a former, visceral dislike of Helen Hunt. The movie was fabulous, so she and I made up. She's unaware.

I am so bummed that anybody wouldn't love Reds.

Can't stand Costner--hated Waterworld. Won't watch Charlie's Angels. Or anything with Matt Damon or Ben Affleck--NOTHING I TELL YOU! No Jenny Lopez movies. No Kill Bills. Sat through 10 minutes of the 1st one---(my husband rented it)
I was enthralled with Branaugh's Hamlet--Didn't watch Mel's.

I like stupid, cheap comedies sometimes, slasher / thriller movies occasionally (Identity), and love to find a sleeper now and then. Just a good/ different story, well acted.

The last time I felt I'd gotten a really good ride was Adaptation.

Any movie is boring if it doesn't involve you in the characters and the story. Sometimes that's not the filmmaker's fault. Or, one man's meat is another man's poison. The full length version of "Heaven's Gate" which I saw once on the old LA Z Channel is actually a good film. The truncated theatrical release loses the story in a flurry of incongrous edits. I've never been able to get through a boring movie and I have to say, considering it is Kurosawa, I tried again to sit through "Red Beard" and couldn't make it through to the end. I'm not sure why anyone would want to single out that a movie is boring. That would mean to me that one feels it is a bad movie.

You know what's as boring as watching The Agony and the Ecstacy? Reading it. He ran his fingers lovingly over the marble and he carved and carved and carved and he carved and he carved, even.

One film critic called it the "Agony" without the "Ecstacy." I've noted this several times before but who could believe Charlton Heston as a dwarf, homosexual humpback? This from the directorial talent of Sir Carol Reed who gave us "The Third Man" and one of the finest of the movie musicals "Oliver!" Not to mention the original and the best of films about mining communities, "The Stars Look Down."

Heston had a limited range. When he was good, as in Ben Hur, I loved him.

fbaezer I find it amazing that you are able to recall boring movies so easily. It must be a gift or genetic trait as I can never rrecall the names of dull movies at all as I will probably never watch them again.

It's important to remember boring / bad movies so that you DON't watch them again. Nothing worse than renting a movie and 5 minutes into saying..."that looks *yawn*mighty familiar..."

fbaezer...you do watch a lot of movies don't you? I can't comment on any of the movies except two, cuz I've only seen two. My Girl is a classic...chick flick that is....and 8 Mile...well, I live in Detroit between 8 and 9 Mile so I have to have some sort of loyalty to my boy.

I can agree with everything that you have said there, Sofia. I know that it is all a matter of taste, but I find that ninety percent of therse 'cross-over movies' for singers are awful, as they are so consciously self-obsessed... I would add Madonna's oeuvre to the list.

No gift, no genetic trait, just geekyness.
I rate every movie I see, since age 15, and classify them from best (the ones I liked most) to worst (the ones I liked least) in a totally subjective way.
I update the list every time I see a film. By comparing them, I'm often remembering them.
All I did was to copy/paste the bottom part of my list and erase those films I disliked for reasons different than boredom.
(Of course, some of the posted films I disliked for boredom AND something else).

I like the AND something else, fbaezer. I often get bored with a movie when the purpose of the film becomes obvious in the first reel and doesn't get any better. It's not difficult to see that they have no story to tell, no good jokes, no compelling characters, no brains to at least be entertaining. I think the best critics can curtail a trip to the cineplex but maybe not getting sucked in to trying to watch the film on cable (not particularly Pay-for-View). One of those that was a slow starter but was worth watching recently was "Timeline." It had a well thought out plotline for which belied the usual time travel paradox one expects. It caught me off guard because the beginning of the film rang out as formula.

The most boring film I ever saw (partly, I turned it off out of sheer despair) was a porn product called Den Kåta Honan (Swedish, would translate as "bitch in heat"), which was as interesting or arousing as watching three butchers beating on a piece of meat in an endlessly repetitive way against a sterile background. It was in fact so utterly boring that I remembered the title of the film, in case anyone would ever ask me the question posted at the beginning of this thread

The other porn film I saw was amusing, so I do not want to put down the entire adult movie industry.

The most boring art film I ever saw was called Color of Pommegrenades (1968) by Sergei Parajanov. It was very hard to get through because it spoke mostly in images and poems that were totally inaccessible, a knowledge of Armenian/Kaukasian culture being necessary to get the gist of the film. I wouldn't say it was a bad film, just that I found it hugely boring.

I actually liked many of the films mentioned in this thread, even the 13th warrior, because I had read the book as well as the Beowulf and some of the Arab writings it is based on (I thought Banderas was not brilliant though). It just goes to show how tastes differ.

I can NEVER watch a movie that was 'loosely' based on a book if I've read the book first. Movies always pale in comparison.

I agree with Lighwizard. "Timeline" is, IMO, quite a good family film.

Walter, I think Umberto Eco gave this definition: "If nothing at all happens during the first half of a movie, it's porno".

About the Former Soviet Union's Boring Art Film industry:
There's an illegal bookmaker who works in Mexico City's baseball park. He sells you little papers with players positions. If the first run of a game is scored by the man in "your" position, you win the jackpot (8 times your bet).
Once, I saw this man at the cinema, watching a Russian film. My first thought when I saw him was: "Is he going to sell little papers to bet who'll be the first spectator to fall asleep?"

A lot did happen in the first half of "Timeline" that set one veering off into different directions. I think without sacrificing the thematic material that the writer and director was able to communicate an enthralling time travel story focused on one historical event that was pretty close to the history books. The script had some of the typical cliches but not cliche ridden as so many of these films have become.

I guess it might be difficult for some to sit through the entire Symphony No. 11 "The Leningrad" by Shostokovitch after the initial impact of the Bolero like ominous march in the First Movement.

The one film I did get through but can look back on as a total bore was "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet." So much good material in novels about Mars, best of all Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" and they come up with all that wishy washy claptrap.

I suspect your friends might be younger than me and that's maybe the reason they liked it and I didn't! :wink:

I didn't like the movie for the following reasons:

The plot was lame at best.

Gratuitious violence.

The writing was terrible.

Too many dull/awkward moments in the movie.

I expected more from Will Ferrell as I think he's a riot on SNL. I'm going to see Dodgeball this weekend. I hope I'm not dissapointed again.

fbaezer: I'm glad to see that someone else thought The Conversation was boring.

TROY, Could hardly wait for the heel to get it

I am not a Bruce Willis fan. I tried to watch his The Sixth Sense, I believe it was, a few months back. Shortly into it something happened to him and he was told "Some people don't know they are already dead." Nothing like telegraphing the punchline two or three hours early. I tried to find something to grab on to and sit to the end. Finally I thought of something that needed to be seen to in the bedroom. I came back, got some coffee, and began wandering in and out of the room for a while. Then I shut down the VCR. Repeat: I am not a Bruce Willis fan.

Master and Commander. I actually fell asleep.

The Most Boring Movie You Have Ever Seen
This was one of Nicolas Cage's movies. It was so boring I can't remember the name of it. He and another person drove an ambulance all night long answering distress calls.

At the beginning of the movie their ambulance overturns, but they seemed to walk away from this accident unscathed. What I started to wonder was, if Nicolas and partner actually died in this accident, and it was their spirit that was driving.

Any Nicolas Cage fans out there that can put me straight on this movie.

betteric