I thought there were supposed to be no fairytales?

Rating: 3/10 (26 May 2002)

!!Spoilers to this movie, as well as to Sixth Sense and Citizen Kane just for spite!!
Shawshank Redemption is one of those movies that oozes with "give me an Oscar pleeeeeease" all over it. You know the type - like "Dances with Wolves." Oversentimental and overlong. It's surprising that this movie has such a high imdb ranking considering it's such a very black and white (prisoners=good, prison-keepers=evil) movie rehashing what's been hashed and hashed many times.
The story concerns an apparently-wrongly-convicted banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who is sentenced to life at Shawshank Prison in that creepiest of states, Maine, for murdering his wife and her lover. His main 'friend' at Shawshank is wily old-time-prisoner named Red (Morgan Freeman). Nobody can deny that Morgan Freeman is one of the greatest actors ever, and I'm not going to. Tim Robbins also gives a performance that one wouldn't guess he had in him by watching, say, "Nothing to Lose" (which nevertheless is a better movie). And the supporting cast is all excellent in roles that are incredibly one-dimensional. Okay, that's it for the good. Here comes the bad, and the ugly.
Early on in the film, Red, who doubles as the narrator, tells us that although he'd like to tell us Andy wasn't gang-raped by some of the fellow inmates (the only bad inmates in there, by the way, and then they get sent away, so that leaves only good ones) but he can't, cause "that'd be a fairytale. And there are no fairytales here at Shawshank." How wrong he is! The whole movie is a fairytale (albeit without any of the excitement and fast-pace of one).
We get characters who are so completely good as to be Saints for our two main prisoners (and most of the other ones) and the Prison guards and warden who all seem to be variations on the evil stepmother from Cinderella and the evil stepmother from Snow White (heck, they're so evil, their intramural baseball team's name is the Marauders. Gee, I wonder if you people get the hidden message?).
The story itself is about two-and-a-half hours of sadism (very slow-paced sadism, mind you), an hour of philosophical jabbering that, frankly, is far inferior to a philosophy class at the college if you're into that sort of thing (Hope is Good? Oh my God! What a revelation! Tell me more! Honestly, I've heard songs which have more depth than this movie!) And half an hour of the ending.
It's hard to talk about the faults of the movie without giving away the ending, because, the ending itself is one of the main ones. All good movies have an ending that makes you think (or at least are somewhat open to interpretation, and/or sequels). But not this one. Although I counted at least five or six points where the movie could have ended with leaving some room for thought, it follows through to the bitter predictable end. It's as if it's saying "you know what, you viewers are all idiots, we better not let you think about anything at all." Even if that was true, it's quite insulting. What's more is the ending is incredibly predictable. How could it not be, if it's told to you in the title of the movie? I mean, imagine if the Sixth Sense was called "The Dead Psychologist" or Citizen Kane was called "The Sled" (sorry, imdb censorship guys, I know this makes your job harder, but I just can't think of a way to explain it otherwise).
And I haven't even mentioned the worst part. This movie is incredibly long and boring. It's not a movie that is "slow" or "moves at its own pace" - those are alright by me. No, this movie, something is always happening, but not a single thing of interest. And like that for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But still.
Another thing is this movie's already-mentioned assumed self-importance. It's irritating at the least. It's a long, boring, unoriginal version of what Cinderella would be if somebody traded in all the women characters for swearing, rape and police brutality. I mean, frankly, Charles Perrot beat you to it by four centuries, that's close to an all time record for unoriginality!