Movie Critics And Ghosts
Recently I noticed that if I’m thinking of going to the movies, I no longer check movie reviews — I check reviews by non-critics at critical websites like Rotten Tomatoes and others. It’s not that the comments there deliver any particular insight into a film, but people generally know what they like and if I read enough of them I can pretty much tell if I’ll like it too.
Movie critics, on the other hand, do not seem to have the faintest idea what they’re talking about. Oh, they know if some small off-beat snooze-fest is “stunning” or “shocking” or “changes the face of movie-making forever” even though no one goes to it and it’s soon completely forgotten. But they have no idea what a good movie looks like.
This seems to be especially true in the case of children’s movies and ghost stories.
When I was the father of little kids (before they passed a law against that), I would read movie reviews of kids’ movies and realize that most critics either didn’t have children or didn’t pay much attention to them. They would pan something because they didn’t like it without ever stopping to think: ”Why should I like it? It’s for kids.” The 5- to 8-year-old audience was clearly going to think it was great. Barring any egregious lapses, that made it a good kids’ movie.
The same problem seems to apply in one of my favorite genres — ghost stories. I see for instance that a lot of critics gave very solid reviews to the third installment in the Paranormal Activity series. Which really was pretty bad. The critics could not tell the difference between the first PA — subtle, original and wildly frightening in the quietest possible way — the second one — a still-fairly-subtle and clever sandwich of a sequel that dealt with events both before and after the first film and thus explained away some of the openers’ storytelling lapses — and the third one — which resorted to all the crappy fake startle scares that the first two eschewed and had an idiotic plot out of one of the lesser Hammer films.
Likewise, when the Woman in Black came out a couple of weeks ago a lot of critics worried that it would be too subtle for teenagers enamored with blood and gore. Subtle? Just because people dress in Victorian clothing and speak with English accents doesn’t mean they’re subtle. The film is one screaming boo after another — and if teenagers are so in love with gore why did they show up for the first, almost utterly gore-less, Paranormal Activity? Possibly these critics don’t know any teenagers, who, for different reasons, will show up for a cheap thrill or for quality storytelling, whichever happens to be on offer.
But the real problem is that critics seem mostly to be fuddy-duddies who look down their noses on excitement, thrills, chills and all the other things that make movies worthwhile. They don’t like spooky stories so they don’t trouble to educate themselves on what makes a good one.
Critics too good for the audience. It’s just one more reason the movies are on the ropes while TV and video games are thriving.
It’s best to find a critic that you always disagree with and then go see whatever they hated.
Many moons ago, I was the editor of a magazine that published reviews of wargames. I actually sat down and thought about the issue that you’ve brought up, because even back then I hadn’t paid attention to movie reviews for years. Most movie reviewers then were relatively unsophisticated. By that I don’t mean that they were immune to the French-subtitle oh-it’s-so-subtle thing, I mean that if they were susceptible to that, it would be pointless to try and get them to watch and objectively review “Star Wars” or “Lethal Weapon.” When the situation gets to the point where you can hear who the reviewer is, and what the genre of the movie is, and from that you pretty much can predict what the reviewer is going to say, you’re in trouble.
The trick here is that in the movie business anyway, it seems that reviewers are supposed to be objective. But that’s not the movie’s target audience. The target audience is *biased* in favor of the movie. Guys don’t go to chick films (except under protest) and women only reluctantly go to violent action films. People who dropped out of high school don’t go to movies with subtitles; Harvard doctoral candidates don’t go to dead teenager movies. Acting as if you’re able to objectively review all of these things is silly, in that there’s no objective standard. A good slasher pic might be an awful romance, too…but then again, the romance crowd probably is going to avoid it. Does anyone think that “Twilight,” for instance, is a good vampire movie (didn’t see it, don’t really care about vampires either)? Having said that, it’s obviously an effective teen romance, because half the teenaged female population has seen the thing hundreds of times. Not my taste, but then again the movie wasn’t intended for 53-year-old males anyway.
What I wound up doing, or trying to do anyway, was matching projects with reviewers who were positively predisposed towards the game anyway, and I think that movie reviews (and book reviews for that matter) should do the same thing. The idea here is to review the product based on the point of view of someone who wants to view or consume it. You don’t ask a person who hates Mexican food if the enchilada is any good. That way, if you get a negative review, it’s from someone who *wanted* to like the product, and was dissappointed.
As I said, I haven’t paid attention to movie reviews for years.
Marrit Ingman, at the Austin Chronicle, was the best kids movie reviewer, ever, hands down. It helped that she had a kid. She also did movie reviews online. And, she was so freaking talented she got hired away to do editorial work at a pay-scale higher than ramen noodles. If you’re shopping older videos, I think her reviews are still googleable.
She also wrote a momoir, which is just sick-funny.
For some reason, the truly worst reviewer at that paper gets all the love, nationally. Not one single useful moment of insight, at all, for any of his reviews. It’s never about the movie, it’s always about him.
And, I wish there was another decent movie reviewer on the block, internet-wise, b/c I’d like a heads-up on good movies. Not great- just good enough for Friday pizza and a movie. Great would be nice- but it isn’t necessary. I’m still irked about getting the lame reviews of Tangled, The Eagle,300, and American Carol. even: cloudy with a chance of meatballs, which it totally different than ratatouille. We’re trying to figure out if we can take the kids to the new versions of the 50′s animatronic greek god films- I don’t even know the titles- they have a lot of swords and serious talk in the trailers.
I would recommend Steven Greydanus of decentfilms.com. He’s a Catholic movie critic writing from perspectives of general analysis, but also with brief analysis of a movie’s moral and spiritual dimensions. He also manages to successfully avoid the general /malaise critique/ you so despise; he gave Woman in Black a B-.