The Shawshank Redemption 1994

4/10. As per my movie rating scale:

"A movie which was so unengaging and underwhelming it in its overall effect, to the extent that you're finding it difficult to fight the urge to want to stop watching. Lethargic and emotionally numbing."

I was surprised that something rated so highly by others was something I just did not connect with or enjoy. Key factors for me that made it unenjoyable:

• The movie has extraordinarily slow pacing. The main point of interesting conflict occurs an hour and a half into the movie. By the last 40 minutes of the movie I was struggling to pay attention and was double speeding the movie just to see if there was anything that salvaged this movie for me.
• Some well-written characters, but also some not. Even though I agree with the movie's message that cops are pigs (I'm a literal prison abolitionist), I found the warden character unengaging and flat. His motivations make no sense, and the change from 'weird Christian person who seems fine' to 'outright disgusting human being' occurs at the drop of a hat. It's just poor writing.
• The twist was not that good and was something you could've seen a mile away lol. It felt incredibly stereotypical and like I've seen it everywhere, but that might be because I'm 24 and grew up watching cartoons or shows whose cliche was based on this? Idk. Underwhelming. Also kinda feels unrealistic to me lol.
• I do not like Huckleberry Finn-style movies. I cannot stand when a movie is a slow-paced collection of feel-good events with no relation or connection. That is what this movie feels like. It's like "Oh this dude goes to prison, he figures out some stuff, but nothing remotely interesting happens until the big conflict at the climax of the movie three fourths of the way to the end."
• I think it's great that this movie humanizes incarcerated people. I just don't think that increases my enjoyment of anything or makes this a good movie. Even though that may have been revolutionary for the time, there are plenty of other movies or books that are just as humanizing as this while offering an engaging plot and believable characters.
• I did not connect with this movie. I'm a 24 year old queer person. This movie feels like it was made for straight men. Idk how else to say it, it just feels really basic in the way straight film bros really like.

Overall I found it dull and overdone. Once a movie starts showing cracks, or once I start to dislike it, I cannot come back around to it. The slowness of the plot really got to me. That and the cliched plot really did it in. This movie could've easily had an hour cut and it would've been a ton more entertaining. For me though, it just didn't connect and frustrated me.