Pirates of the Carribbean was probably my biggest movie surprise ever. I went to see it 'cause Orlando Bloom was in it (I know, I know ) and hardly expected it to be at all redeeming or entertaining otherwise, but I was pretty darn surprised at how good it was, especially for a movie based on a friggin' amusement park ride for crying out loud. It was wonderful. ^_^
My worst surprise movie-wise was Reign of Fire. I had expected it to at least be entertaining as a cheesy action movie, but after 2-odd hours of boring, overused plot and bad dragon FX, I found that I was horribly wrong. I think one of my friends put it best when he said that RoF tried to be too many things--a post-apocalyptic movie, an action movie, a buddy movie, etc., and wasn't too good at any of those.
THANK YOU, AMEN. So many people say "oh, the first movie was wonderful and deep and thought-provoking, it was just the second two that spoiled the genre" but in my oh-so-humble opinion they were that bad from the beginning. The pretentiousness of the second two was just more unbearable, that's all. (Ironically, I've seen the Matrixes more times than perhaps anyone I know, or at least parts of them. The stuff I do for my Hugo Weaving fix. *sigh*)