Come on people, it wasn't THAT good

Rating: 5/10 (12 July 2003)

Before I rant on the absurdity of Memento being currently ranked #14 on the Top 250 list, I'll say what I liked about it. Yes, it was an extremely entertaining, original and well-done all around film. The acting was first rate, the story decent, and the film makers did a great job putting it all together.
However, I may be crazy, and I'm sure the "film snobs" will grit their teeth at this, but at the end of the day, isn't Memento just a gimmick? A water cooler novelty? I mean, basically they took a slightly above average plot and did something new, and granted inventive, by editing the film structure in reverse. For the most part, the movie is pretty much shown from end to beginning. Yes, they did enough to make things make sense in between, but essentially it was an exercise in "hey, let's make a movie, and then edit it so everyone will talk about that reverse movie".
I don't care what anyone says. That's the bottom line, period. I've talked with plenty of fellow movie buffs who I consider to be reasonably intelligent, and some are even the snob-types mentioned above. And none of us can figure out what all the fuss is about. Maybe we ain't that smart.
I hate to get into comparisons, because it's difficult to compare different types of movies. But be honest, if you can tell me with a straight face that Memento is an overall better film than "Apocalypse Now", "A Clockwork Orange", "Pulp Fiction", "Goodfellas", "Fight Club", "Jaws", "Chinatown", "Raiders of The Lost Ark", "American Beauty", "Silence of the Lambs" and a large chunk of the other 230 films ranked below it, than you just need to sit back, take a deep breath, reel in that massive "I'm a nonconformist art-house movie aficionado" thing and get a reality check. It was a good movie, but it wasn't that good.