Posts under ‘Pet Peeves’

Have you ever stopped liking something because everyone else started liking it? I try not to be a hater, but something about a mass group of people liking one thing – talking about it, obsessing over it, quoting it – kind of turns me off to the very thing they’re all so jazzed about. The minute it becomes ubiquitous, I check out.

It’s like when a song you really liked the first, second, third time you heard it all of a sudden gets radio play every fifteen minutes. By the fortieth time you’ve heard it that week, you no longer want to. The song hasn’t changed. Your exposure to it has. And just like a song getting overplayed, movies get overhyped. I prefer seeing movies before the hype. Then I can come up with an opinion about it all by my lonesome, without knowing what everyone else thinks about it. But even after, hype can kill.

The first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite was in January of 2004, six months before its release, and I liked it. Maybe I was caught up in the electric energy of my first time at Sundance, maybe the crowd of enthusiastic film-goers influenced by openness to it. Whatever it was, I walked out liking its unusual humor, its outcasts-have-their-place-too vibe.  I saw it before its emergence into pop culture, before it became the film that every other person I met during my freshman year of college was quoting (gosh!). I no longer list Napoleon Dynamite as one of my favorite movies.

The first time I saw Juno was November 6, 2007 (I remember ‘cause I blogged about it right after), about a month and a half before its release and subsequent indie explosion. I loved it. I thought it was beautifully written, acted, and directed. I still think so. But I saw it before its promos aired at every commercial break, before Mr. Voiceover Man told me to go see the quirky new comedy that everyone’s talking about, before “shenanigans” became part of everyday vernacular. It’s still one of my favorites, but I watch it less.

I’m not sure when I jumped on the Slumdog Millionaire train, but I rode it for a while. In fact, I’m still on it. I loved this film, and a whole slew of other people did too. And then it got all that lovely Oscar buzz and won a million awards (that number may be a little high). And looking back, I’m sure I spoiled it for someone somewhere when they asked if I’d seen Slumdog and I responded, “OH-MY-GOD-I-LOVE-THAT-MOVIE-IT-WAS-SOOO-GOOD-YOU-HAVE-TO-SEE-IT-SERIOUSLY-GO-AS-SOON-AS-YOU-CAN-SO-WE-CAN-TALK-ABOUT-HOW-AWESOME-IT-WAS!” Overzealous? Dammit. Did I overhype that movie?

Overhype is the worst. It slaughters greatness. Expectations matter and if they’re too high, you can end up thinking less of a product that is actually good in its own right. My most recent experience of this was The Hangover, which I saw a few weeks after it came out.  A couple days after its release I already knew the line “tigers love pepper, they hate cinnamon” thanks to several viewers’ Facebook statuses.* So when I saw that line in the movie, I’ll admit it was a little less funny. And the movie as a whole was a lot less funny because I went in with high expectations after hearing it was beyond hilarious, OMG outrageous, and, like, the funniest movie ever.

Timing Is Everything

Sometimes things live up to the hype, and nothing anyone can say can take away from its awesomeness. This varies for different people based on what they’re into, I’m sure. In my case, I remain unwavering in my love and devotion to Harry Potter. After umpteen years, I am still a completed unabashed HP fan, despite the millions in my company. But again, I got in before the hype.

I also got into the Twilight Saga at just the right time, it seems. At the suggestion of an enamored friend, I read all the books – and yes, loved them, judge me all you want – well before the release of the first movie. I got sucked in (pun intended) before the hype. And yet I’m certain that if I hadn’t read the books before the movie’s release, had witnessed the madness and mayhem of it all, and THEN my very same friend told me to read this series, I wouldn’t have done it. Or at least I would have been very hesitant to do so.

Is there any movie you’ve seen/book you’ve read/song you’ve heard that got slightly marred because it was overhyped? Or any one of these that you’ve avoided altogether because despite the good things you hear about it, you hear them far too much?

*Sorry if you haven’t seen it yet and I totally just ruined that line for you. My bad. Perpetuating the cycle.