Five movies that sounded like a terrible idea until you saw them
Movie fans are insatiable creatures, always searching for the next modern classic or hidden gem they can gush about to their friends and families. Or, as is probably more likely in this day and age, give a five-star review on Letterboxd.
Having said that, we cinephiles can also be a judgmental bunch. While we love seeing brilliant films, we are also painfully aware that the majority of movies will simply not measure up to that standard of excellence. In fact, we’ve all seen enough duds over the years that we can be pretty darn cynical when we want to be.
This list, however, is an antidote to that cynicism. Sure, most of the time we see a trailer or read about a film and think, “That sounds like a terrible idea,” we’re proven depressingly correct. But what about the times when we couldn’t be more wrong? What about the movies we dismissed as creatively bankrupt or ill-conceived that wound up being pleasant surprises?
From a much-maligned recent comedy remake to an update of a classic from the ’60s, by way of a couple of unexpected delights watched at home and in the cinema, here are five movies that sounded like a terrible idea until I actually saw them.
Five movies that sounded like a terrible idea until you saw them:
‘The Naked Gun’ (Akiva Schaffer, 2025)
In the lead-up to its release, it would be fair to say that the prevailing opinion on a new version of The Naked Gun in 2025 was negative. So negative, in fact, that die-hard fans of the beloved Leslie Nielsen franchise were declaring the new Liam Neeson version to be blasphemy, while David Zucker, who directed the original film, let it be known he had intentions of seeing it. Add that to a general apathy toward Neeson’s recent action thriller efforts, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Amazingly, though, when The Naked Gun was released, cinemagoers worldwide who gave the movie a chance resoundingly laughed themselves silly. From the very first minute, it produced a sight gag so perfectly in the spirit of the original that it let fans know they were in good hands. From then on, it proceeded to fire so many jokes at the audience that it didn’t matter if one didn’t land, because the next one to come along ten seconds later would bring the house down. Best of all, Neeson proved himself to be an inspired casting decision, bringing the right level of Nielsen-esque deadpan to the film, plus a healthy dose of unexpectedly hilarious goofing off.
Ultimately, the new Naked Gun proved that sometimes we should wait until we see something to judge it as a violation of our childhoods, or a dagger in the heart of comedy. After all, I’d argue that no film in the last decade has made people laugh as loudly and as consistently as Frank Drebin Jr’s farcical adventure, and for that, it must be saluted. Hell, the snowman scene is worth the price of admission alone.
‘BlackBerry’ (Matt Johnson, 2023)
In 2009, David Fincher proved against all the odds that a movie about a bunch of university nerds creating a social media platform could be hugely compelling. That movie was, of course, The Social Network, and Fincher’s tale of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook eventually beget a whole raft of impersonators: Steve Jobs, The Founder, Joy, Flash of Genius, and Air, to name but a few. By the time we got to movies like Tetris, The Beanie Bubble, and Flamin’ Hot, though, it was clear Hollywood’s obsession with dramatising capitalism had perhaps gone a little too far.
Into this market stepped BlackBerry, a 2023 comedy-drama about the creation of the mobile phone everyone’s dad swore by in the early ’00s. This sounded like a terrible idea, and even the casting of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Glenn Howerton as a bald corporate rage monster did little to raise the pulse. Then the movie came out, and it was by far and away one of the best examples of this brand of, for lack of a better term, ‘product picture.’
Somehow, against all the odds, BlackBerry managed to be rib-ticklingly hilarious and dramatically weighty at the same time, despite its cast being toplined by comedic actors, and its director being known for comedy, too. It also looked and felt like a real, honest-to-goodness movie, despite being a fairly low-budget affair, and was justly rewarded with a 35mm print being shown in its native Canada and in America. Howerton flying off the handle in hilarious, yet gorgeous, 35mm fashion? Yes, please.
‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (James Gunn, 2014)
By 2014, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was hitting its creative stride. It had worked out its early kinks, and with the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in March of that year, arguably delivered its best instalment thus far. Next up, though, was Guardians of the Galaxy, which is still one of the biggest gambles any major studio has ever taken on a blockbuster release. For its 10th film, Marvel chose to spend $200 million on a comedy space opera starring a group of characters even comic book obsessives hadn’t heard of, all under the auspices of a director whose previous movie was a violent superhero satire that made less than $1 million at the box office.
Naturally, industry insiders and fans alike predicted Guardians would be Marvel’s first major flop. Instead, it outgrossed the solo endeavours of Thor and Captain America, and birthed one of the company’s most popular franchises. Gunn didn’t just make a hit movie with Guardians; he arguably gave a generation its own Star Wars. Guardians was a four-colour delight, with gut-bustingly funny humour, incredible action sequences, and an anarchic streak a mile wide.
However, Gunn’s greatest triumph in the movie was with its characters, each of whom sounded like a disaster waiting to happen on paper. Somehow, he made the world fall in love with a gruff talking racoon; a space adventurer who was like Han Solo, if he were a dimwit; a scarred alien behemoth who didn’t understand irony; and a talking tree who could only say his own name. A terrible idea? More like an inspired creation.
‘Mean Girls’ (Mark Waters, 2004)
In 2004, this intrepid cultural commentator was an 18-year-old high school graduate plying his trade in the most wonderful place in the world: a video rental shop. Well, OK, slinging copies of Shrek 2 on DVD to the population of a small village in Northern Ireland wasn’t exactly heaven, but it was a darn sight better than some of the other available options, namely petrol stations and supermarkets. And hey, it meant I got five free rentals per week, and could watch whatever I wanted in-store (within reason, of course). Those were the days.
On one particular morning, though, I have a vivid memory of breaking down a delivery for a new release DVD. It was a film I hadn’t seen in the cinema, likely because I was a Frat Pack-obsessed teenage comedy nerd who quoted Anchorman and Dodgeball ad nauseum, and probably looked at it like ‘girls’ stuff.’ But it was a quiet day, and I’d watched Spider-Man 2 so often in the shop that people were starting to complain. So, I slotted Mean Girls into the store DVD player, and had my mind blown.
I can only assume that I still served customers that day, but it could only have been in between bouts of laughing and rewinding the best scenes. For a guy who thought a comedy about a nasty teen clique starring child star du jour Lindsay Lohan sounded like a terrible idea, I quickly became invested in the popularity war waged between Cady Heron and the villainous Regina George. It was a revelation, and taught me an important lesson: never try to make “fetch” happen. Because it simply won’t.
‘True Grit’ (Coen brothers, 2010)
If there are any directors who wouldn’t immediately spring to mind when thinking about remaking a John Wayne western, the Coen brothers would surely be at the top of that list. Sure, in 2007, they made No Country for Old Men, a nihilistic modern-day western-thriller hybrid, but aside from that, the idiosyncratic brothers were known for oddball comedies and off-kilter noirs like Raising Arizona, Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, and O Brother, Where Art Thou.
So, when it was announced that their follow-up to 2009’s daffy Burn After Reading would be a reimagining of True Grit, eyebrows were well and truly raised. That 1969 film won Wayne an Academy Award, and his depiction of the eyepatch-wearing US Marshall Rooster Cogburn has gone down in history as one of his most popular performances. How could Jeff Bridges, reteaming with the Coens after The Big Lebowski, hope to measure up to the ‘Duke’?
The answer, of course, is that Bridges didn’t try to measure up, and neither did the Coens. Their True Grit is a much, much different movie than the 1969 one, and that’s for the best. There’s an argument to be made that it is the Coens’ most straightforward, commercial film ever, but it’s still filled with classic Coen weirdness and a slew of incredibly memorable performances from Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. The true star of the show, though, is Hailee Steinfeld, who made her feature film debut as the wise-beyond-her-years Mattie Ross and acted just about everybody else off-screen. Magnificent.
