(I can't believe I wrote another TLDR ramble. I feel like an alcoholic who's incapable of stopping at one drink)
The problem with most film critics is threefold:
- In general, critics are not in sync with what audiences want. I get the impression more than a few critics take pride in this and actually cultivate distinct taste. This is why Transformers 3 grossed hundreds of millions of dollars last year and has a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score.
I understand that movie critics would be functionally useless if they we
nt to Transformers 3 and wrote about how the movie was the best of the year because the actions sequences are so exciting. But, I would also suggest they are becoming less and less relevant for a reason.
I know a guy who told me, in all seriousness, that Transformers 2 was a great movie. He told me (I'm paraphrasing) that I could look at it like a film snob, but that I was missing the point because it was fun to watch and he thought it was well done.
I disagree with this. A lot. But, if he told me, "I haven't seen Transformers 3 yet, I want to know if you think I'd like it," I'd tell him to see the movie immediately and that he would probably love it. I'd mention that the first part of the movie is definitely slow and drags on a bit, but that the movie really gets going once it starts in earnest. I would say this without a hint of derision (I hate when movie critics talks about who would like the movie they don't like in an insulting tone).
The role of movie critics should be to give an educated analysis of the movie's qualities and describe who would like the movie and why. I should be able to read a movie review and have a rough idea of whether or not it's worth my time to see it. Critics seem to openly not care about this.
- Critics don't seem to care whether or not they really undestand the films they review. Here's
Roger Ebert's review of Team America: World Police. It's fine that he doesn't like the movie because he's not its intended audience. I'd say he just shouldn't write his review, but that seems unreasonable since reviewing movies is his job.
The problem is two-fold. One is that he doesn't recognize any of the above. He thinks, purely because he's a movie critic, that he should be able to criticize the movie with both barrels. Never in his review does he suggest that it might not be best to look at the movie through his critical lens because the movie wasn't designed through it.
Here's what I mean:
Regrouping, the team's leader, Spottswoode (voice by Daran Norris) recruits a Broadway actor named Gary to go undercover for them. When first seen, Gary (voice by Parker) is starring in the musical "Lease," and singing "Everyone has AIDS." Ho, ho.
The Everyone Has AIDS song is wonderfully catchy and hilarious. If you were a fan of Parker and Stone and didn't like this song, you'd talk about your disappointment. You'd feel let down. He just dismisses it because he doesn't care. He was never going to care.
Also, there are multiple parts of the review which make it abundantly obvious that Ebert doesn't even understand it on an intellectual level:
The plot seems like a collision at the screenplay factory between several half-baked world-in-crisis movies.
In a movie that is clearly meant to satirize action films, he doesn't consider the possibiliy this was done on purpose?
Opposing Team America is the Film Actors' Guild, or F.A.G., ho, ho, with puppets representing Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (who has written an angry letter to Parker and Stone about their comments, in Rolling Stone, that there is “no shame” in not voting). No real point is made about the actors' activism; they exist in the movie essentially to be ridiculed for existing at all, I guess.
Not true. The movie's intention is to satirize the disconnect between the political ignorance of actors with the degree to which they believe they are knowledgeable. At the end of the movie, the actors are actually fighting for the bad guy because they are so easily mislead.
If I were asked to extract a political position from the movie, I'd be baffled. It is neither for nor against the war on terrorism, just dedicated to ridiculing those who wage it and those who oppose it.
He missed the dicks/pussies/assholes speech.
I'm not saying critics can't make mistakes ever. But this is pretty bad. This is supposed to be the biggest/best critic in America.
- Movie critics aren't filmmakers. Here's a paragraph from
James Berardinelli's review of The Last Airbender (the Reelviews guy):
It's hard to express how off-putting Shyamalan's script is. The movie is filled with awkward exposition - scenes in which characters state things for no reason other than to inform the audience of some piece of background. A romance develops out of nowhere for characters we don't care about. A lot of things, such as Aang's ability to drop into a trance and speak with a dragon spirit, are poorly motivated and reek of deus ex machina.
I've hate watched this movie a couple times and thought a lot about it. It's a highly informative piece of bad film making. So obviously I wouldn't compare my thoughts on the movie to his. But even when I had just gotten done seeing the movie, I understood the fundamental reason the screenwriting was bad. Nothing really happened.
For example - When they go to the Southern Air Temple, they see the dead remains of Aang's people and he gets supernaturally angry. The end. We see nothing meaningful about his friendship with the group (they care for him, but we don't feel it). We get no sense of the connection he did have with these people when they were alive. We don't see how he changes as a character to move on from this, merely that it happens. And on and on and on. You don't need to be a professional screenwriter to understand this. A film critic definitely should be able to. I think Berardinelli is one of the better movie critics out there too, which makes this worse. If a film critic for a local newspaper didn't understand this, I'd get it. But one of the better ones? Oy vey.
Also, it'd be nice if critics had any regard for the commercial circumstances under which movies are made. I don't know what's gained by ignoring the fact that movies are designed to be profit-generating enterprises. You can't look at any movie, even an independent movie, outside of a commercial context. Movies are designed to fit this. I've seen critics talk about movies as obvious cash grabs, but that's easy. I've seen critics talk about how movies skillfully balance commercialism and art, but the implicit statement is "The movie managed to be something that could be successful in theaters without sucking."
I'm not going to say being commercial is necessarily good. But consider that before the Avengers, Joss Whedon created two TV-series that were cancelled in their first and second seasons. Then he wrote and directed the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time under Marvel's watch.
What I've never seen in a critic's review of a movie is respect for how tough it is to make a work of art commercial. It's treated more as a political act than a function of good film making, which reflects a non-understanding of the process.
What's ironic and funny is that when studios put out their Oscar-bait movies, the critics lap them up just as they are supposed to. It's nice that if critics are going to have an obvious blind spot in their approach, that we have the chance to laugh at it.