I believe there is a general bias against women’s films among male film reviewers, and most of them share the American cultural bias against the sexy. That does not mean they WANTED the movie to fail with an active evil will, but that they were DISPOSED to see it fail.
I think pro movie reviewers watch too many movies, often movies they have no interest in seeing. And by “watch” I mean watch with something like their full attention. I would hate having to do that myself, since most films simply are not worth an adult mind’s full attention. Most work best in the background while you are doing something else. It throws off their sense of what’s fun for the average moviegoer who only watches a movie with full attention (at the theater or at home) maybe once a month and makes them unreliable predictors of what’s good. For example, the pro reviewers also gave “Jupiter Ascending” a very low score on the Rotten Tomato meter, and I thought it was a fine little space opera. Not the be-all and end-all, it had its flaws, but it was fun to watch. So … overall, not impressed by professional movie reviewers, nope. I do think Roger Ebert often did a fine job.
All right, that’s a convincing summary, reviews from critics were mixed, then.
As for your second point, not sufficiently interested in doing the work. I remember getting that impression from reading about Fifty Shades of Grey. Feel free to differ with me if you like.
I mostly agree with what you have said, however, I think the erotic fiction market is a lot broader than you think. It just doesn’t have any other authors that have seen mainstream success like James did, but there are a LOT of writers and readers out there having a grand time. Many more now, thanks to Fifty Shades bringing the genre more exposure.
I agree, the likely result of the success of Fifty Shades will be a spate of low-budget erotic romances. I’m OK with that because, really, erotic romances don’t need huge budgets to be good … it’s not like most of them require CGI or period costumes and elaborate sets. What they do need is really, really good scripts and directors who can bring said scripts to life. I do not think this will be a commonplace in the genre, but a couple of hits every year will make up for a LOT of low-budget misses.
The film’s box office performance is reminding me a lot of that of the *Sex and the City *movie. Huge “surprise” hit among non-standard audiences, followed by a step drop-off - and a sequel that tanked completely, ending the careers of everyone involved. I wouldn’t place any bets on the next *Grey *flick.
Just to be clear, I think the romantic erotica genre is both broad and deep. The romance genre is over 50% of all genre fiction and erotica as a subgenre has been growing for a decade. It’s bigger and better selling than either science fiction or fantasy and possibly than both combined.
That’s true at the same time it’s true that there has been only one huge, breakout author, which has been the only thing Hollywood cared about.
So you were interested enough to start a thread about how 50 Shades of Grey has been unfairly slammed by “all the pretentious movie reviewers” who wanted it to fail, but you can’t be bothered to name even one critic who gave the movie a negative review.
Did you in fact read any reviews of this movie? Because it’s looking more and more to me like this thread is really about you trying to claim some sort of symbolic victory over those you feel have misjudged you.
Yes, I read several, watched more on video. I was just agreeing with you because you are so insistent that the reviews were mixed. Most of what I read made me think they didn’t like the movie and wanted it to tank. I’m not really interested in doing a lot of … well, any … research to discover specific quotes of reviewers who didn’t like the movie, but I tell you what, just AS A FAVOR TO YOU, I will link once again to theWTF Movie review of 50 Shadeswhere all three guys disliked the film and the single female reviewer liked it. Have at!
Also, I am pretty sure that no pro movie reviewer knows that I exist, hence would not have judged me. What a strange conclusion to leap to.
That’s a shame. You should be agreeing with me because I cited actual reviews and aggregate scores instead of making unsupported claims like you’ve been doing.
It’s not really a favor to me that you should finally attempt to provide some sort of evidence for your own claims. Or did you mean that you would do me a favor by citing another mixed review? I just finished watching the “What the Flick?!” video, and I didn’t notice anyone cackling about how 50 Shades of Grey was going to flop. Instead I saw four people having what seemed like a pretty reasonable discussion about its strengths and weaknesses. One of them (Christy Lemire) liked it, two who generally disliked it still had some positive things to say about it (Ben Mankiewicz praised Dakota Johnson at some length, Matt Atchity mentioned a scene he liked and said the soundtrack was good and that fans of the book would probably enjoy the movie), and the one who was most negative in his remarks (Alonso Duralde) seemed like he was mostly bothered by the movie’s negative and overly tame depiction of BDSM. At the end their average rating was a 4.3/10, which is pretty close to the Metacritic score (46/100) and Rotten Tomatoes average critic rating (4.2/10) that I already cited.
I haven’t seen the movie myself so I don’t know if it deserves better than that, but neither do you. What I can tell is that the critics seem to be largely in agreement about 50 Shades of Grey being a movie that isn’t very good but does have some enjoyable elements, especially Johnson’s performance. The most common criticism I’ve seen, one also discussed in the video you linked to, is that the male lead was badly miscast and that he and Johnson lack chemistry. That doesn’t seem like the sort of complaint critics would make if they were prejudiced against the source material or subject matter.
I didn’t say you thought that professional movie reviewers have judged you. I think you’re using film critics as a stand-in for whoever it is you believe has misjudged you. That’s just a guess of course; I have no way of knowing what your real motives are. But I do know that your weird insistence that 50 Shades of Grey was unfairly savaged by critics who wanted it to fail isn’t about the merits of the movie itself (you haven’t even seen it) or the critical response it received in reality.