9 Movies That Everyone Has Been Tricked Into Believing They Love

6. The People's Classic Trick - Gladiator

In this case, I'm not going to argue that you shouldn't like Gladiator. I'm simply going to argue that you shouldn't like Gladiator quite as much as you probably do (if that doesn't describe you, feel free to move on). Okay, so Ridley Scott's "classic" swords and sandal epic won the coveted Best Picture Oscar back in 2000, and for the general public, it seems like this is the movie - alongside The Shawshank Redemption - that gets tossed around as an all-time favourite time and time again.

Gladiator has its good points. It is not a bad movie. But it is a sincerely overrated one. The problem here is that Gladiator falls into a nice category - it's a kind of accessible Oscar-ish movie doused in sentimentality that also happens to be paired with scenes of great violence and action. It's a People's Classic - an unpretentious man's choice for "favourite movie" (the declaration of which could earn you a free pint down the pub).

The idea of Gladiator - of the slave triumphant - is an incredibly alluring one: fact is, the execution is messy and the script is overwritten and frequent dull. But Gladiator's legacy - its standing as a modern People's Classic - has pushed more and more folk into declaring their affinity for this one than it probably deserves.