In the past 10 years, Netflix has gone from a fairly niche rental service to what is arguably the biggest juggernaut in film and television on the market today. And in the past five years, they’ve only done more and more to diversify their content and ensure that they are offering their subscribers the kind of service that most people couldn’t have even conceived of before Netflix existed.
And while they have produced some legitimate hit movies and some of the best TV shows in existence today, with the amount of material that they’re churning out it’s a virtual guarantee that some of it is going to be a bit lackluster. Netflix produces content for every audience, but sometimes there is nothing really worthwhile about the TV series and movies that they’re making. These are their most overrated Netflix Originals in the past five years.
A Christmas Prince
The Netflix Original movie A Christmas Prince is pretty much the standard holiday rom-com fare that anyone would expect from something like Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. And while Netflix does have a pretty wide spread of material that it produces, frankly it’s a little lowbrow for the typical Netflix Original.
What’s even more baffling about A Christmas Prince is it’s enduring popularity. This completely forgettable film doesn’t have a lot of meat to it, but it has apparently been popular enough to warrant two sequels. Presumably the movies are pretty inexpensive to produce, but it’s an odd series with no end in sight.
Fuller House
One of the most brilliant things about Netflix as a streaming service is their willingness to revive projects that were originally underappreciated or that didn’t get the kind of closure that they really deserved. They have resurrected a few different TV shows and wound up with great results.
However, one TV sitcom that really didn’t need a reboot was Full House. Full House did continue on in reruns ever since the series initially ended, but it hasn’t held up nearly as well as some other shows. And to add on to that, the actual TV show Fuller House is even more disappointing than one might have expected.
Set It Up
In a few short years Netflix managed to transform itself into one of the biggest hubs of prestige TV and film, but that doesn’t mean that every single thing they do is supposed to be high art.
Set It Up is one of many Netflix romantic comedies, and although the amount of these movies that they produce would indicate that they’re pretty profitable, the movies themselves often times end up being spectacularly mediocre. Set It Up got a bit more traction than the average Netflix movie, and that traction is almost entirely unearned, as the movie is a boring retread of every rom-com stereotype known to man.
The Dirt
Hey, did anyone ever sit around wondering what the behind the scenes info of Motley Crue’s career as an 80’s hair band was? Yeah, we didn’t either. Musical biopics are a pretty regular feature in feature films, but Motley Crue was not nearly popular enough or interesting enough to warrant their own movie.
Everyone could have easily imagined what their lives were like at the peak of their success, but as the movie shows, it’s actually worse than most people probably envisioned. Plus, the few things that are actually interesting or worth digging into about the band are completely glossed over in this film.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile
For a hot minute there it seemed like Netflix went a little Ted Bundy crazy. In addition to their pretty riveting documentary series about this notorious killer, they produced Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, which was a fictionalized feature film about Bundy and his crimes.
Or rather, the movie focuses more on Bundy’s completely normal girlfriend and her experiences as Ted is discovered, arrested, and put on trial. There is something to be said for the concept there, but the execution is just a flop. Their version of Bundy is a bore, and his girlfriend is even less interesting.
Gerald’s Game
In theory the combination of Netflix and Stephen King should be a pretty deadly one, right? Well, while Gerald’s Game is a passable horror movie in it’s own right, it’s just not the kind of standout material that anyone would be expecting from Netflix or from the prolific horror author.
Plenty of mediocre adaptations of Stephen King’s works have been made before, but the author has had a bit of a renaissance in the past few years, so when there are so many great films being made and competitors like Hulu are killing it with their King works, Gerald’s Game just isn’t making the cut.
Marvel’s The Defenders
Much like the apex predator Marvel movies known as The Avengers, Infinity War, and Endgame, The Defenders is a Netflix original series that made the mistake of trying to squeeze too much into one show.
Watching their four lead Marvel heroes come together to fight for everything good and righteous in the world should have been a grand old time, but the final product was less than the sum of it’s parts. Most of Netflix’s Marvel TV shows were great on their own, and after seeing The Defenders it really seems like they all should have stayed that way.
Birdbox
Netflix actually produces a pretty staggering amount of movies, but every so often they get one that is a legitimate hit. Bird Box is definitely one of those few. With a leading star like Sandra Bullock, it was a near guarantee that this movie was going to get more attention and traction than the average Netflix flick, and on it’s own Bird Box is a fairly entertaining movie.
However, the entire premise is kind of a one note, completely unexplained plot hole, and there isn’t a whole lot of meat on it’s bones. It’s an okay movie that somehow wound up being one of Netflix’s biggest hits.
13 Reasons Why
13 Reasons Why was originally supposed to be a one off limited series, but the first season wound up being such a runaway success that it was pretty much guaranteed that Netflix was going to milk it for all it’s worth.
And now that the series is a few seasons in, it’s readily apparent that they probably should have left it alone. After the story of season one concluded, the show’s writers had to come up with something entirely new to keep the series going, and it seems like the show keeps getting weaker and weaker as it plods on.
Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life
In fairness, Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life is a pretty good show, and it’s definitely a clear continuation of the previous series, so fans of the show were guaranteed to be somewhat satisfied by the results. However, that is also the show’s main problem.
A Year In The Life comes almost a decade after the original Gilmore Girls, but the series starts off as if Lorelai, Rory, and the rest of the gang has essentially been frozen in time and done nothing in the interim. And the conclusions that the characters got would have been great for the original series, but feel pretty out of place now.
