Ehh...

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2014)

I've had this DVD sitting on my shelf for a while, and I'd been working my way through all of the other movies surrounding it. I finally forced myself to watch it using the logic of "it's ranked high on the IMDb Top 250, how bad could it be".
To clarify, I am not saying that Casablanca is a bad movie, I'm just not saying it's fantastic. I can see how it might be "groundbreaking" and "innovative" back when it was made in the 40's, but in todays world, it is not amazing. It's very difficult to compare a movie from the 40's to a movie from the 21st century, in fact the only way I know to compare movies is based on my afterthoughts.
What qualifies a movie as 10 stars for me, is a movie that either gives me the chills at the needs because of how amazing the ending was, or if the movie keeps me thinking about it for days afterward. It's a movie that has an ending that is permanently engraved in me. Movies like The Shawshank Redmption, The Sixth Sense, The Intouchables, Memento, The Green Mile, Full Metal Jacket, etc...
A 9 star movie is a movie that I find to be entertaining, but not quite as memorable as a 10 star. The 9 star category for me has a lot of good movies in the category, such as Pulp Fiction, American Beauty, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Fight Club, etc...
However, Casablanca is not as memorable as any of those movies either. The movie is not, I just don't find myself challenged by the movie. The acting was okay, but nothing that blew my mind. I understand the message of the movie, and how powerful it was supposed to be. The movie was slow, too slow for me. It left me with the same problems as the Godfather; I think that the movie is building up to some dramatic ending, but then it just mellows out.
This seems like the kind of movie that was regarded as the best of all time for many years, but, unfortunately for fans of this movie, there are many other movies that surpass this one. My opinion is that people tend to rate movies they consider "classics" higher than the new blockbusters, even if both eras are capable of producing movies that are equally as good as one another.
Honestly, the only reason why this movie doesn't get a higher rating than it has (from me) is because there was never a part in the movie where I felt like I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, but there were scenes where I began to fall asleep. Five minutes after the movie was over, I found myself thinking about my plans for the following day, and what I planned on having for dinner. When I watched higher rated movies, for example Into The Wild (10 stars), I found myself putting myself into the protagonists situation, and then i found myself running to the bookstore to get the book about the true story. This movie didn't have that lasting impression on me.
Even though my opinion is most likely contrary to every other movie watcher on here, I think that i have a valid point by saying that this moving brings nothing "revolutionary" to the table, and by that I mean that there is no part of this movie that leaves me teary eyed, laughing hysterically, or piece together a complex mystery. The movie is just... ehh...