YMMV / Tulip Fever

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The film is a Period Piece romantic drama whose premise involves the tulip mania in 17th-century Amsterdam, but written more like a Lifetime Movie of the Week on a bigger budget. Historical fans didn't like the extreme liberties that were taken with the film (with tulip mania becoming more of a historical backdrop than the focus of the movie the title suggested), and romance fans were turned off by the Darker and Edgier tone to the romance as it was more about pregnancy and a nunnery despite it being billed as a sex thriller and romance drama. The movie got a lot of negative reviews largely due to its hard sell and became one of 2017's biggest flops, grossing under $2.5 million on a $25 million budget.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: An odd mix of this with They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. The film was billed as a Period Piece about the "Tulip mania" of the 1600s. Unfortunately, the two main romances in the movie, and the various Kudzu Plots connected to those relationships, render the tulip craze to a plot device mostly used as conversation fodder, and as a possible means for the various male characters to quickly raise money for various personal goals.
• Strangled by the Red String: Sophia is portrayed as falling so passionately in love with artist Jan that she and her maid hatch a plot to fake her death so that she and Jan can run away together. Except that, apart from hot sex, it's not clear why Sophia is so attached to Jan, nor is it clear why she's so desperately unhappy with her husband — who is admittedly older and a bit stodgy, but seems to treat her well and genuinely care about her, which was about as good as most people expected from marriage at the time. Beta Couple Maria and Willem are much more believably in love, but their relationship is subject to different Kudzu Plot shenanigans. Doubles as a Romantic Plot Tumor, as viewers expecting a movie about the Dutch Tulip Craze will find that element to be mostly set dressing for the various relationship dramas.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A movie solely centered on the Dutch "Tulip mania" craze of the 17th century would've been quite interesting, considering that it rarely gets treated on American media. Unfortunately, this film delivers it as merely a plot device for the film's two romances.