What Causes You to Hate a Movie?

[Newt]

I generally end up hating any movie where the flaws - technical or in the writing etc - are so prominent that I cannot overlook/accept them and just go with it.  I love a good 'bad' movie; but there is a qualitative difference between 'laughably bad' and 'lame'.

I hate it when they take a good premise and then fall FAR short of its potential: I resent that the premise that hooked me in might not get a second chance, since it  has 'been done' (though barely).  These days that might not be so for long...but I still hate a hack job that only goes a fraction of the way to realizing what I expected it could be.

[JaseSF]

Hmm well it could be any number of things really...

Just to look at a few examples of films I hated:

ARMAGEDDON: mind-numbingly stupid, CGI SFX lovefest. Of course you could probably argue the same for most of Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's work. Strangely I tend to like Emmerich and Devlin (although I often wonder why I keep watching their stuff) and not Bay perhaps because their films seem a bit closer to 1970s disaster flicks and/or cheesy mindless B-movie fare of yesteryear, both guilty pleasures of mine. Still ARMAGEDDON and many other films like it are all flash, no soul and substance. Basically the movie equivalent of a shined-up turd.

BOOGIE NIGHTS and CLERKS II: too arty/trendy, dull and overlong (BOOGIE). Too much about trying to shock and get a rise out of the audience (CLERKS and BOOGIE). Almost seems childish and immature at times (Both). This can pretty much apply to most of Kevin Smith's other work too.

ACCIDENT (1967): dull, overlong, glorified overimportance put to things that really aren't all that important or or even interesting. Characters who are just dull and/or a bore.

NATURAL BORN KILLERS: I hate movies that repetitively and seemingly endless try to hammer their point down viewer's throats. This film is a good example. Another one that's too much like an endless music video.

[Mr. DS]

shaky camera shots is the #1 cause lately

[El Misfit]

the lack of suspense, bad CGI, old comedy crap, the amount of stock footage, to a certain degree of bad acting, STUPID PLOTS

[Paquita]

I can be pretty forgiving when it comes to acting and the quality of technology.  What I can't stand is a bad story.  I hate it when a movie uses a string of highly improbable situations and horrible judgement just to get to some "meaty" scenes or the main part of the movie.  I also can't stand comedies where all the jokes are based around someone's misfortune.

Also no sympathy for characters.  That can, in part, be bad acting or just characters who are all arseholes who I don't care about.

Characters that are self-righteous, argumentative, conceited - but the writer and director apparently thought we're supposed to like these people.  No, I find them detestable.  Please kill them immediately.

I totally agree!  I can't believe the amount of movies that surround a group of jerks and one not-so-jerky person that you're supposed to like, but I don't because that person is stupid for hanging around with all those jerks!

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

1) BAD SCIENCE- I can tolerate Jet Jaguar "programming himself to grow" or THEM being atomic mutated insects.  But I can't stand movies that try to be scientific and realistic, but don't actuallly get it even close to right.  "Of course its the monster, I did a pH test!" or, "look at those cells, thats Human DNA" "or "We need to run across the hot lava" kind of stuff. 

2) Noise and camera movement simulating action.  This is just a redo of the old star trek stuff where they shook the camera. 
2a) Unsteadycam work- jerky cuts and wobbly camera work.   
-Ed

[diamondwaspvenom]

Several reasons:

If it's boring : I can tolerate, even enjoy most bad movies. However, should the movie be boring, it automatically loses its appeal to me.

Horrid acting : Another flaw that ruins a movie. The more I hear these people talk, the more I pray that they will be devoured/killed/butchered by the monster.

Lame lead characters : Oh yes, the ones that are one dimensional, cardboard cut-outs and annoying stereotypes. What's worse is that sometimes we have to root for these guys when no one gives a crap about them.

Bad comedy : Random violence, sex jokes, fart jokes,huge amounts of slapstick and having a kid say or do something that some immature adult or teen would do is NOT FUNNY.

[ulthar]

This is a really great question and for me really hard to quantify.

All of the things mentioned in this thread MAY make me hate a movie, but the presence of any one or a number of these "offenses" does not necessarily mean I WILL hate it.

At the end of the day, I think it is just an organic response.  There have been movies that I have loved right up until the ending and the "payoff" did not work for me.  8MM was like this for me...great build up as a thriller, total failure when it turned actioney.  Having said that, I think the "action" genre is overused as a technique/plot device and takes me out of a movie that set itself up in Acts 1 and 2 otherwise (thriller, drama, etc).

I don't tend to get too upset about fx (traditional or cgi) either way...it's all part of the "art" and it either works or does not...the big exception here is the "did not even TRY" as already mentioned.  The few fx in THE CAINE MUTINY were laughable, but that remains one of my all-time favorite films (though the pointless romance subplot almost lost me, it was Jose Ferrer's character and acting that brought me back smiling - actually all the core cast acting).

Movies that can't figure out what they are, ie no real direction, turn me off pretty quick, too.  A director with no vision for what he wants the movie to be tends to make a movie that is pretty hard to watch even if the script is excellent.  This gets back again to "did not care" but it could also be incompetence, though PLAN 9 remains a fun indulgence.

Finally, I almost universally hate formulaic movies.  These are movies that are made solely as a business medium with not pretense of art.  The romantic comedy genre hits this pretty hard....and we watch our fair share of these.  The American ones tend to provide the double insult of not being funny, but at least the UK ones get tend to get a few laughs.  This is especially bad if the plot devices used to drive the formula are completely contrived (bad enough if they follow a natural flow).  In the romantic comedy formula, this could be the Act 2 break-up being driven by something so completely stupid it would NEVER cause a break-up of any sane people (and why would the Act 3 reconciliation happen once the dude saw how nuts she was to push the Act 2 break-up)?

Yep, formula movies (action, romantic comedy, police/courtroom drama, etc) spark my hatred pretty quick.  If I've already seen the movie 1000 times, what's the point?

[Flick James]

Came into this thread just now. It seems it has already demonstrated what I was going to say. The initial question, what causes you to hate a movie, is almost equally as complex and subjective as what causes one to like/love a movie, with all the points brought up thus far being relevant to the question. Throw in a person's idiosyncracies and it becomes a riddle wrapped in a mystery. I, for example, tend to abhor remakes, making it difficult for me to objectively appreciate a good one. Or, for another example, I am almost identically in line with Circus-Circus' disdain for CGI, although I think his may surpass my own. A CGI-laced remake would then be particularly difficult for me even to attempt to watch, let alone be able to appreciate anything that might be good about it.

[Jim H]

The worst single thing a movie can be to me is boring.  Which is why I borderline hate Wings of Desire, which has some other fine qualities (good photography, good performances, Peter Falk) - it's just extraordinarily boring.

[lester1/2jr]

when it seems like a***oles made it

[Hammock Rider]

Interesting question. Actually, a great question.

If I had to sum it up in one word, that word would be mediocrity. I've watched pretty much every type of movie you can think of, with budgets from what looks like several hundred dollars to hundreds of millions, and the one thing that always grates is the unwillingness to try.

For instance, I have seen many no-budget films which are god-awful, but at least you get the sense that they are trying. I might not like them, but I can sense the filmmakers were at least trying. On the other hand, I've seen purported hundred-million dollar films which were worse, because you can sense the filmmakers never ventured beyond the tried-and-true.

Usually it boils down to the writing, and the writing builds up to the final film. If that core is not there, what was the film made for? Once I realize there is no real core, every moment of a film will grate on me until I'm gritting my teeth in anger at the filmmakers. Then I hate a film, because it's garbage disguised as an entertainment product. This can be the case for both no-budget films and so-called blockbusters.

It's not the only reason, but watching a film the filmmakers don't even care about? Torture.

  Wow this is really almost exactly how I feel. I have a one strict rule for movies and that's : Does it entertain me? My entertainment bar is pretty low and I can find fun in almost anything(Not Jonah Hex though!) If I am not entertained but I think the film makers at least made an honest attempt at making a decent film, then I probably won't watch it again, but I won't actually hate it. If the movie seems to be extruded out of some film makers derry-aire (sp) without a thought for the audience AND it's not entertaining by mistake or in any other way, then I will usually hate it. I'm not sure what that says about me as a movie fan, but that's just the way things work for me.

[The Gravekeeper]

For me, when a movie isn't entertaining I hate it. If it's boring I won't sit and watch it all the way through (unless I really need a nap anyway), but if it seems to actively insult my intelligence then yes, I will hate it.

[the ghoul]

Nicholas Cage or Tom Cruise being in it.

[indianasmith]

Hmmm . . . stuff that loses me in a hurry . . .

1.  When every single character in the movie is a despicable person.  BULLY falls into that category, so does HAVOC (although the presence of the Goddess Anne Hathaway makes that one more tolerable).  Give me one decent character that I can actually like.
2.  Stretching it out too long.  GANGS OF NEW YORK would have been a much better film if it were an hour shorter.  On the other hand, extra time crammed with cool storyline stuff and character development is fine . . . . I have watched my Extended Cut LOTR trilogy several times, and loved it!
3.  Films that take an innocent concept and turn it into pure perversion.  LAND OF THE LOST is a prime example; based on a whimsical, fun kid's show, it was nothing but a platform for crude, sex-based humor throughout.  I hated it!