Top 10 Most Overrated Movies of the Last Decade

Top 10 Most Overrated Movies of the Last Decade

We’ve all left a theater buzzing from hype only to realize the magic fades on the drive home. Hype machines are louder than ever, and some movies rode the wave to sky-high praise they couldn’t quite sustain.

This list pokes the glittering balloon with equal parts affection and honesty, separating dazzling marketing from durable storytelling. Ready to question a few sacred cows—and maybe start a friendly argument?

1. Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

Silken production design and 1950s gloss set the table for a feast the script can’t quite serve. The hype promised a mind-bending domestic dystopia where every frame hides a secret, yet the narrative pulls threads it never weaves back together. Characters speak in aphorisms, motivations shift on a dime, and the grand reveal lands with the weight of a decorative pillow.

Performances simmer, but the drama behind the camera weirdly outshines the drama in front of it. You can feel a sharper film struggling to break through, like a signal muffled by static. The atmosphere is sumptuous, but the ideas feel reheated from better genre entries.

Why it’s overrated: The marketing promised a psychological masterpiece, but it fell apart under weak storytelling and behind-the-scenes drama that overshadowed the film. Pretty surfaces can’t mask a thin core, no matter how glossy the veneer.

2. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Pandora returns looking better than your desktop wallpaper could dream, and the water tech is undeniably jaw-dropping. Still, the story swims in familiar currents, paddling toward redemption beats and family tropes we’ve charted before. Characters feel like tour guides for tech demos, ushering us from coral cathedrals to creature showcases with little time for truly surprising turns.

It’s the kind of movie you admire more than you feel. When the spectacle pauses for emotional crescendos, the notes sound clear yet oddly hollow, as if echoing across a vast lagoon. You leave with images burned into memory and character arcs already fading.

Why it’s overrated: Visually stunning, yes — but many felt it was a recycled plot from the first movie with little emotional depth. Waves of beauty crash, then recede, revealing storytelling footprints we’ve seen before.

3. Joker (2019)

Grit clings to every frame, and Joaquin Phoenix turns his body into a haunted instrument. Yet beneath the bravura performance, the film’s ideas feel curiously blunt: society bad, empathy scarce, chaos inevitable. The ambiguity it courts often plays like winking provocation rather than thoughtful inquiry.

It borrows prestige textures—Scorsese hues, grimy hallways, needle drops—and treats them like a thesis. The character study wants to be incendiary, but much of the conversation coalesced around tone rather than insight. After the final dance, there’s surprisingly little left to unpack beyond mood.

Why it’s overrated: Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was incredible, but the film was accused of being shallow in its message despite its gritty tone. It’s a stunning portrait wrapped around a pamphlet, not the manifesto its reputation suggests.

4. Don’t Look Up (2021)

End-of-the-world urgency gets filtered through meme culture, cable news chaos, and celebrity self-parody. The result is a comedy that shouts its thesis so loudly the punchlines lose oxygen. Instead of sharpening its barbs, the film sometimes swings a hammer where a scalpel would do.

The ensemble sparkles on paper, and individual bits land, but the cumulative effect is bludgeoning. Satire thrives on specificity; here, everything’s capitalized and italicized, leaving little room for discovery. You nod along to the message, then wonder why the laughs feel dutiful.

Why it’s overrated: A-listers, big budget, and an urgent message — yet the satire felt too heavy-handed for many viewers. It’s a wake-up call that keeps hitting snooze, louder each time, without deepening what it’s saying.

5. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Multiversal mayhem arrives wearing googly eyes and hot-dog fingers, vaulting between tones with gymnastic flair. For some viewers, that maximalism feels like emotional whiplash: heartfelt one second, hyperactive the next. The inventiveness dazzles, but the constant reinvention can dilute the impact of any single idea.

It’s a buffet where every dish is spicy, and by plate four, your palate begs mercy. Themes of generational trauma and immigrant identity resonate, yet the delivery sometimes buries tenderness beneath noise. You admire the audacity even as you crave a breath.

Why it’s overrated: Hugely inventive and loved by critics, but some viewers found it chaotic, overly long, and emotionally exhausting. A triumph of imagination can still be too much of a good thing for many.

6. La La Land (2016)

Jazz hands meet dreamlike sunsets, and the camera glides like a dancer in love with itself. Underneath the sparkle, however, the romance often resembles a carefully curated Instagram feed: pretty, posed, and thin on lived-in messiness. The songs soar even as the story tiptoes around sharper edges.

It nods to Golden Age musicals while smoothing away their brassy bite. The result is pleasant melancholy packaged as profundity, a postcard wistful about ambition without interrogating it. You get melancholy stardust where sweat might have been more interesting.

Why it’s overrated: Gorgeous production, but critics argue it’s a style-over-substance movie that romanticizes mediocrity in relationships and art. The finale enchants, yet the feelings feel airbrushed on the way there.

7. Dune (2021)

Sand roars like an orchestra and starships hum with ecclesiastical solemnity, crafting awe on an industrial scale. But awe isn’t intimacy, and the film’s chilly grandeur often keeps its characters at ceremonial distance. Emotions whisper while the sound design bellows.

As an opening chapter, it’s meticulously arranged—etched sigils, priestly politics, immaculate costumes—yet closure drifts over the horizon. The narrative pauses just when the stakes should bruise. You’re left admiring the cathedral without meeting the congregation.

Why it’s overrated: Visually epic, but felt emotionally distant and incomplete — like a long trailer for Part Two. The spice flows, the heart less so, waiting for a payoff the credits postpone.

8. Barbie (2023)

Plastic fantasia pops with bubblegum color and meta-wink humor, inviting everyone to the dreamhouse. Halfway through, the story juggles so many targets—patriarchy, capitalism, identity—that none stay in the air long enough to truly land. The tonal ping-pong between sincerity and sketch comedy can be charming and scattershot.

Performances sparkle, production design slays, and the soundtrack sticks. Still, the film sometimes feels like a panel discussion condensed into a costume party, with conclusions tidy enough to fit the packaging. It’s fun, but it’s also focus-challenged.

Why it’s overrated: It sparked massive cultural conversation, but critics argue it tried too hard to please everyone and lost focus in its second half. The dreamhouse is gorgeous; the blueprint, less coherent.

9. The Batman (2022)

Rain soaks Gotham like a perpetual mood board, and the detective angle finally gets its close-up. Yet the plot meanders through journals, clues, and cat-and-mouse detours that stretch a whisper into a sermon. Style oozes from every shadow, but the emotional pulse stays surprisingly faint.

It wants to be a procedural with bruised knuckles, though the mystery rarely feels unsolvable. Scenes linger long past their point, luxuriating in gloom. When the credits roll, the noir aroma lingers more than the story.

Why it’s overrated: Stylish and moody, but overly long and surprisingly hollow beneath its noir aesthetic. You get three hours of rain and vengeance with a drizzle of character revelation.

10. Tenet (2020)

Time runs backward, dialogue runs muffled, and exposition sprints a marathon before the story catches breath. Action scenes are intricate clockwork—thrilling to watch, bewildering to parse. Emotional stakes, meanwhile, feel notarized rather than lived, as if filed between storyboards.

It’s a puzzle that congratulates you for almost solving it, then changes the rules mid-clap. The cleverness is undeniable, but clarity too often drowns beneath conceptual riptides. You admire the engineering while searching for a heartbeat.

Why it’s overrated: Christopher Nolan’s time-bending concept was fascinating — until it became incomprehensible to the point of frustration. The film bends time and, occasionally, the audience’s patience into pretzels.