Highly Overrated But Still Good

Rating: 7/10 (28 May 2014)

A good prison movie whose cult of fans has made it into something so much more than it is. Greatest movie ever made? Get real. It's not even the greatest prison movie ever made. Hell, it's not even the best movie released in 1994! It's predictable and borrows heavily from decades of prison movie clichés. It's also nowhere near as deep as its staunchest admirers would have you believe. Still, it's an entertaining movie. Nice direction from Frank Darabont. Morgan Freeman is the highlight with a solid supporting cast. Tim Robbins, however, is borderline ridiculous at times with his cartoonish facial expressions and silly "stares-off-into-the-distance" moments. He's so far beneath Freeman as an actor it's sad. With a normal movie like this, I would focus more on the positives. I did give it a 7, after all. Unfortunately, it is easily the most overrated movie of all time (on IMDb, for sure) and as such the balance of positive to negative is out of whack.