Why Film Critics are Worthless

For years I have been reading reviews of new movies in publications from the New York Times to Cracked.com. The reviews by actual film critics (effectively anyone associated with a newspaper or other such publication) have proved worthless more times than I can count. I recall one time when a Twilight film got a better review than an action film that came out around the same time (can't remember which). At no point should a Twilight film be given a good review. This isn't my personal bias talking, but it's based upon the unwritten rule that film critics have been following for years.

Take a quick couple of minutes and read this and this (to the end of the Fast Five review). Try not to get distracted by the random article generator on Cracked. Back? Good. Both reviewers discuss the absurdities in the movie, the general lack of plot, and how terrible the second (even Luda and Tyrese couldn't save this one from what I hear) and third films were. However, Dan O'Brien emphasizes his overwhelming desire to see the film despite all these things because he just knows it's going to be awesome. Joe Morgenstern, on the other hand, tries to class up his review (thereby making the movie seem classier or more ridiculous, I honestly can't tell) by comparing the chase scenes in this to Buster Keaton's and using words like "gravitas" and "geniality". Unfortunately, Morgenstern's review is typical of film critics and O'Brien's is typical of random people ranting in Blogs.

I have a theory as to why film critics tend to be such dicks. After spending between four and six years (on average) earning and English/Journalism/Film degree people think they have a special insight that no one else does and they hold high hopes for doing something prolific. Thus film critics are either people who believe that their reviews are art, that they are better than the filmmakers, or who want to compare every film to great works of literature. Let me ask you something: why do you go to the movies? If you answered something in the vein of "to be entertained" then we're on the same page. That's why movies like X-Men, the Fast and the Furious series, Transformers, and most other movies with lots of graphics, explosions, and car chases are successful. People pay too much money to sit in a dark theater with strangers who make too much noise because they want to see giant robots on a bigger screen than they can have at home. I wonder if anyone recalls the reviews from the 2009 summer blockbuster Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you don't here's a brief synopsis of the overall critic rating of the film. Now I'm sure some of you hated it; the plot wasn't as strong as the first, some of the robots were ridiculous, Shia LaBeouf annoys some people, Megan Fox annoys even the people who think she's hot, and the list goes on. But when we really get down to it, why did you go see the movie? Because giant robots were beating the crap out one another and destroying stuff in the process. That explains the discrepancy between the user rating and the critic rating. I'm sure the user rating would have been higher if people haven't been taught by critics that a movie needs to be something ground-breaking or profound.

This brings me to my next point: the Oscars. While film critics don't decide who wins the Oscars, they do proclaim potential Oscar winners in their reviews. These films tend to be smaller films and/or concerning political or confusing/incomprehensible plots. Avatar should have won best picture in 2010. It was innovative, highly entertaining, and a hit with the general population. But The Hurt Locker, a film about soldiers, stole the statue away from Cameron. This doesn't change the boatloads of money Cameron is still raking in from his film, but it further justifies that the Oscars are pointless. As much as I enjoyed the King's Speech, the uniqueness of Inception or the powerful performances in True Grit were more impressive than the plot behind Speech. However, a cast of often overlooked actors including Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth is what led to the statue. That's because the Oscars have become a "circle of ineptitude", paying back actors who they believe deserved awards in the past, or whose entire body of work is award-worthy, but they're too young to receive a Lifetime Achievement award. It's unfortunate that, while the summer blockbuster and the comic book movie have become staples in the yearly round of movie releases, they are not praised or derided because they are movies made for entertainment's sake.

I feel sorry for film critics. They have easily one of the best jobs in the world, but their education has trained them to look for hidden meanings, to interpret other people's work and twist it to suit their conclusions, and to not simply enjoy something for its superficial value. Time and again we see movies made simply to be entertaining panned by the critics, but adored by the audiences. Interestingly enough, if you put a Shakespearean actor/director behind the camera of a Marvel movie, you get great reviews. Or if it's a somewhat ridiculous foreign martial arts film it gets AMAZING reviews. This is why I have taken to reading reviews and concluding the film should be good if panned by critics. This has about a 80% success rate thus far. So I guess critics aren't completely worthless, you just need to know how to correctly interpret their reviews.