30 Day Movie Meme - Day 13 - A Movie That You Used to Love But Now Hate

[elrhiarhodan]

Day 13 – A movie that you used to love but now hate

The Lion in Winter



Oh, how I loved this movie when I was a teenager. I'd seen it first on PBS during some beg-a-thon, so it had only one break, and then Jane Merrow came on and talked about making her first major movie with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole and how awesome it was to share the screen with such legends.

The Lion in Winter was also the first VHS movie I bought (and it cost a bundle). I watched it so many times, I wore the tape out.

Then a few years passed, and a few more years passed and I realized that it had been almost fifteen years since I'd seen it. So I bought it on iTunes and found it…

A lot less awesome than I remembered.

Okay, I don't precisely hate the movie, but it's much less than what I remembered.

I still love Katherine and Peter as Eleanor and Henry - they spark and sparkle. Nigel Terry as the very disgusting John and Simon McCorkindale as the disaffected Geoffrey and of course Anthony Hopkins as Richard are all brilliant.

And lets not forget the very young and very beautiful Timothy Dalton as King Philip.

But there's something so overwrought about the movie - particularly the scenes between Eleanor and Richard - that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's too much a psychological drama and not so much a retelling of a moment in history.

And lets not mention the homophobia please.

/shudders



Day 1 – Favorite Movie
Day 2 – Last movie you watched
Day 3 – Your favorite action/adventure movie
Day 4 – Favorite horror movie
Day 5 – Favorite drama movie
Day 6 – Favorite comedy movie
Day 7 – A movie that makes you happy
Day 8 – A movie that makes you sad
Day 9 – A move that you know practically the whole script of
Day 10 – Your favorite director
Day 11 – Your favorite movie from childhood
Day 12 – Your favorite animated movie
Day 13 – A move that you used to love but now hate
Day 14 – Your favorite movie quote
Day 15 – The first movie you saw in a theater
Day 16 – The last movie you saw in a theater
Day 17 – The best move you saw during the last year
Day 18 – A move that disappointed you the most
Day 19 – Your favorite actor
Day 20 – Your favorite actress
Day 21 – The most overrated movie
Day 22 – The most underrated movie
Day 23 – Your favorite character from any movie
Day 24 – Favorite documentary
Day 25 – A movie that no one would expect you to love
Day 26 – A movie that's a guilty pleasure
Day 27 – Favorite classic movie
Day 28 – Movie with the best soundtrack
Day 29 – A move that changed your opinion about something
Day 30 – Your least favorite movie

Comments

[ultracape.livejournal.com]

I love this movie and still love it especially the curtain scene. It was so dramatic, painful an hysterical at the same time. It's always been one of my favorites.

[riverotter1951.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling of watching a movie years later and realizing how different I feel with the changes in my life. Lion in Winter is still one of the movies I enjoy but as you mentioned now that I know more of the history, I see it differently.

[leonie-alastair.livejournal.com]

"What family doesn't have it's ups and downs?"

A Lion in Winter. It's probably my favorite 'problematic favorite,' I know the history is bad, the characterizations are wrong, the dialog is overwrought and the homophobia is cringeworthy. But oh my god Katherine Hepburn & Peter O'Toole are amazing. This is one I will never not see through rose colored glasses.

But I saw Bringing Up Baby the other day and was completely put off by Hepburn's rich cluelessness and the whole "I can make your life worth living if you just give up being a grown up" plot. I was shocked by how annoying I found a movie I had once loved. So yeah - I feel for you.

[elrhiarhodan]

I love every scene with Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn - they just burn down the world. He says to her "I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. " and she replies, oh so laconically, "At my age there's not much traffic anymore. "

But its hard to watch the scenes between Eleanor and Richard, they are all too Edward Albee-like. I feel like I'm watching some demented historical version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woofe?"

And I do agree with you about "Bringing Up Baby" and even "Philadelphia Story" - the acting is so overwrought, exaggerated, stylized. I don't think that until the great '39, there's a movie from that decade that really stands the test of time.

And if you really want to be nauseated, watch "My Man Godfrey" OMG, Carol Lombard makes Katherine Hepburn in BUB seem as nuanced as Meryl Streep in Silkwood.

[leonie-alastair.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole Eleanor and Richard subplot always made me cringe.

I haven't seen 'My Man Godfrey' in forever. I guess I'll just let it fade into pleasant memories of bias cut satin dresses and William Powell in white tie. :D

My favorite movies from the 1930s are all best watched as highlights reels, Fred Astaire movies (great dancing, dull plots) and Marx Bros movies (funny bits, dull plots), Errol Flynn does Sabatini (great action scenes, ridiculous plots). The kind of movies you watch while doing handwork and only paying partial attention.

[ladyrose42.livejournal.com]

Any old movie I watch now that total stereotype certain behaviors whether it be religion, color, culture makes me cring now. Guess that means I've grown up a little

[maiac.livejournal.com]

When I had surgery last year to remove the pins/plates from my no-longer-broken arm, my sister came up to stay with me until I could fend for myself. I got a couple of my favorite movies from Netflix that I thought she'd also like. The Lion in Winter was one of them. I hadn't remembered it as quite so shouty and angry. Alas, I was still a little too drugged to realize that I should say, "Y'know, I can tell you're not enjoying this, let's watch something else."

The other movie was the 1995 production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, and Judi Dench. That went over much better.