Sorry about the slight OT but I couldn't help share this.
My father, many years back, narrated his experience of watching The Godfather for the first time and how he felt about it.
In his mid-20s and in Mumbai, my father went for the screening at Regal (or was it Sterling
) and came out pretty much unimpressed and wondering what was all the fuss about. Before boarding the local back to Sion, he picked up the novel from a bookseller to see if he could make sense of all the hype. While in the train, he got so engrossed in the novel that he got down at Dadar, went to some park and couldn't move till he finished the entire novel in one go. With the movie still fresh in mind, his attention was totally riveted on how Coppola managed to transport the plots, the characters, the dialogues, and the mafia culture from the novel to the silver screen with such incredible detail and finesse. Having finished the novel the same day, he headed home and went again for a screening the next day. This time, the aim was to purely enjoy the work of Coppola, the actors, and of course Puzo and his co-written screenplay. He'd been well and truly hooked ever since.
I hadn't seen the movie when he told me this but I sure didn't feel the same kind of enthusiasm as he did when I eventually watched it much later. But on repeat viewing countless number of times, the movie has grown on me and I can still watch it any number of times. Alas, I still haven't read the novel, which means my appreciation of the movie is only to rise further when I do come about to read it.
Also, @
psyph3r has put it perfectly in his post. Saw Star Wars in theater (when it was re-released in the late 90s) with dad (again a huge Lucas fan) and couldn't come around to appreciate it the first time as it looked like dated stuff. But over time, the original trilogy has become one of my favorites.