What's so great about this?

Rating: 5/10 (12 December 2010)

I don't often feel a need to review a movie - especially when it's one that I didn't like much. But since this movie is so famous and so highly regarded, and since I found it to be such a mediocre film, I had to voice my opinion. If you're like me, you'll want to skip this movie.
After years of putting it off, I finally saw this movie the other day. I could not believe that what I saw is considered a classic and a "must see" film. OK, so I know it has some pretty good lines and scenes, and it has some iconic actors, and the screenwriter has a pretty impressive list of films he's done before. But there's a lot more to making a good movie than just having famous people work on it. And in my opinion, this is a very boring movie.
Whenever I watch a movie that I consider boring, it's usually because I don't care about the characters or the story, and when that happens, it's the screenwriter's fault. William Goldman wrote one of my favorite movies, the Princess Bride. That had a great story and some really great characters. And for the most part, it was done with relatively unknown actors.
This film, however, had some very famous actors and was about some very famous actual historical characters. I love stories about the Old West, and I really should have enjoyed this movie. Instead, it was very hard for me to watch this film. I fast-forwarded through many parts of it just to finally get through it.
The "raindrops" scene with Newman and Ross on a bicycle was completely out of place. How does a late 1960's pop song have anything at all to do with Butch Cassidy? This scene is horrible. It added absolutely nothing at all to the film. We already know Katharine Ross's character has relationships with both of the title characters. The bicycle scene was totally unnecessary, and I can't imagine why that wasn't cut out of the movie entirely. Even if you watch it on 2X, you'll still waste 5 minutes waiting for the scene to end.
There's another scene when they're traveling to Bolivia. This takes forever as well. Do we really need to see the sepia-toned pictures of these actors making their way down to Bolivia? I don't think so. It certainly doesn't have to be as long as it was, either. I hate it when screenwriters don't give the audience enough credit. We all know how far away Bolivia is. We don't need to see 12 minutes of footage to know it took a really long time for them to make it there.
Finally, a word about the acting. Newman, Redford and Ross have done some great work in other movies. In this one, though, I'm not sure they were necessary at all. Just about anyone could have done just as well as they did. I didn't see any reason at all that they were needed for this film to work.
My advice to you is to skip this movie. It is terribly overrated.