I don't hate this movie - I hate the Fan-base

Rating: 5/10 (23 October 2019)

In the early '80's, Stephen King read a short story by Leo Tolstoy called God sees the truth, but waits - a man falsely accused of murder is incarcerated and over the course of decades grows to be well liked and respected by the other inmates, and eventually someone shows up at the prison who can prove his innocence. Sound familiar? King promptly ripped it off and re-packaged it as Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The main difference being that in the Russian original the dude dies in prison while waiting for his release papers to be processed whereas Stephen King had to rewrite it to give it the cheap cheesy family feel-good Disney ending that Americans have been trained to expect from everything.
Darabont substitutes melodrama for an actual pulse: Like the scene where Andy crawls through a quarter-mile of Diarrhea and comes out clean on the other side, oh Lordy Hallelujah all things are possible in America! (Jazz hands). And I hate to seem like nitpicking, but if you're gonna crawl through a tightly enclosed tube in a quarter-mile of s**t, you will either pass out from the unbearable fumes and drown in diarrhea, or at the very least, have your lungs filled with fecal matter and experience some severe adverse health effects, but no, Andy is perfectly fine because that's how that scenario would totally play out. Or the ending when Red is finally released from prison - "Oh I hope I get to see my friend again oh I hope the sea is as blue as I remember" - And then they meet on the beach and live happily ever after because that's how prison goes -- Thug Life.
The movie is indistinguishable from anything else - It does nothing new - no new techniques, story structure, presentation. It is your standard, typical, by-the-book story. There is nothing to distinguish its direction - you could've replaced Darabont with Spielberg or Zemeckis and it would've come out about the same. There is nothing to distinguish it visually - You could've replaced Roger Deakins with another big name and it would've come out more or less the same. It could've been made by any director specializing in over-sentimentality, shot by nearly anyone, produced by anyone, there are no unique or distinguishable fingerprints on it.