Mediocre people reward mediocre cinema.

Rating: 1/10 (24 May 2005)

It bugs me that this movie is rated so high- not because it's a "bad" movie, but because it's a mediocre one. Apparently, mediocre people reward mediocre cinema. This movie tanked big-time when it was initially released, and with good reason. It wasn't until pseudo-intellectuals across the country started hyping it as defacto "favorite movie" for Lowbrows world-wide that it started dominating the IMDb "best movie" list. In reality, "Shawshank" is like a sewage pump for every idiotic Prison Movie cliché ever made. Every guard is a monster. The warden is religious, therefore Evil. Not a single prisoner is actually guilty, or if they are, they're so obviously redeemed that we're supposed to feel sorry for their unfair imprisonment. Murderers and sex offenders sit around in beatific awe as Opera plays over the loudspeakers. Right. The whole movie is so fake, so smarmy, and so condescending that it's no wonder that so many Americans, (with their odd addiction to fake, smarmy, condescending things) consider it their "favorite movie". I guess thinking for yourself is a burden to great for some of us to bear.