Well, I'm relatively young, and I think age has something to do with whether or not you like Casablanca. My father, for example, first saw it in his teenage years (when it first came out) and he fell in love with the movie. He claims he even cried.

Casablanca didn't have the same effect for me. I guess I understand that this sort of movie was not common back then, and so was very sensational when it came out. But I don't judge movies on how good they were in their time. I'm not going to give it any more credit just because it was one of the first of its kind. Casablanca came off as one of the sappiest, most rushed movies I had ever seen, despite what people told me. Overall, it wasn't very impressive. Then again, I'm not really a fan of those older movies. I tend to think that the acting in them is very rigid and unpassionate.

I think people sometimes overrate classics because they are just that--classics. And classics seem to automatically mean greatness. Although there are indeed many classic movies that are great, not all of them are.

And of course, if you grew up around the time it was first made, it could evoke certain feelings of nostalgia that could bias your opinion of it. It certainly seems like this is the case with my father, who only has memories of how much he adored the movie. His praise for it is why I watched it in the first place. When I stated how disappointed I was, he shrugged and said, 'I don't know. I always remembered it as being much better.'

DonVitoCorleone summed it up for me: