# Film Critic Armond White: for real or a troll? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 22, 2010, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/film-critic-armond-white-for-real-or-a-troll/544144 "2010-06-22T18:04:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/film-critic-armond-white-for-real-or-a-troll/544144/41 "2010-06-24T05:27:22Z")
> [@Skammer](#): > > Obviously this is up for debate, but I don’t think that’s the reviewer’s job. I think the reviewer’s job is to tell people what _he or she_ likes – which is going to be informed by years of watching and studying film. And to give the reader enough information about the movie to let the reader decide if it’s worth seeing or not.. Well, that’s one way a critic can work. I can look at Die Hard and say “The characters are paper-thin, the motivations are ridiculous, and the plot is just an excuse to blow things up. What a pile of crap.” I can also look at Die Hard and say “Holy COW that was fun! And funny! And Alan Rickman chews the heck out of the screen as a bad guy! What a fun ride that was.” At least one way to review a movie is to compare it to others of its type to see how well it does its job – for an action movie, is the story compelling enough to string you along from action scene to action scene? Are the explosions and fight scenes good enough to make you forget that it’s utterly unrealistic? Does it revel in its ridiculousness and successfully convince the watcher to get in on the show? I like reading reviews for and against films I liked or disliked, especially if I have some niggling doubt about a movie that I can’t quite put my finger on. Someone somewhere can. But let’s look at Mr. White’s review of Toy Story 3: > [@](#): > > But Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination—the usefulness of toys—and strictly celebrates consumerism. Really? Product placement? That seems strange: only a very few of the toys in the series are obviously branded products: Barbie and Ken are the obvious ones, but I honestly can’t think of any obvious brands beyond that, unless you stretch (ha!) to get the Slinky dog. In fact, the very first movie’s first conflict is between a hand-me-down toy and the bright shiny new thing. They end up getting along, but an underlying theme of the movies has seemed to me to be _against_ consumerism: the idea of being replaced, of buying the new improved Woody with the kung-fu grip, is abhorrent to the toys in the movie. They don’t want to be melted down and replaced. > [@](#): > > But none of these digital-cartoon characters reflect human experience; it’s essentially a bored game that only the brainwashed will buy into. Don’t tell me he actually watched this movie and missed the OBVIOUS FREAKING SUBTEXT – no, the ACTUAL TEXT OF THE MOVIE NEAR THE END – where the entire theme is turned back around. It’s about the way roles change when children grow up. > [@](#): > > I admit to simply not digging the toys-come-to-life fantasy (I don’t babysit children, so I don’t have to) nor their inevitable repetition of narrative formula: the gang of animated, talking objects journey from one place to another and back—again and again. This, to me, seems the rub: “I don’t like it because I don’t like this type of movie.” Yeah? I don’t like gross-out comedies so I don’t watch them. I guess you don’t have that luxury when you’re a professional critic, but maybe you could actually pay some damn attention to the movie you’re supposedly being paid to review. It’s a review written by someone who thinks his Master’s means his views and ponderings are relevant to anyone who doesn’t have a MFA in film studies. It’s the review equivalent of the guy at a party who namedrops every celebrity he can think of in the hopes he’ll impress someone, anyone. From his Wikipedia article: “Critic Kyle Smith has, on the other hand, indicated that White “simply has a different aesthetic from that of the herd”.” While I’m just going to smile pleasantly at the notion that everyone else is merely a sheep or a goat or something, I’d like to put forward that I don’t tend to base my opinions on the thoughts of the guy nobody agrees with. I don’t get my political commentary from the screaming hobo behind the 7-11 and I don’t get my movie reviews from someone who hates half the films I like and calls me an idiot for liking them. It actually does remind me a bit of an article I saw on, of all places, Penny Arcade. I think it was a review of Assassin’s Creed: so many reviewers hated the game, but the guy writing on the comic thought it was pretty neat. He figured that it probably has to do with the fact that reviewers play these games quite differently from the way anyone would who plays them for fun. When playing a video game is a job and you have to do it for everything that comes out – God of War or My Little Pony Princess Adventures – your perspective shifts. When you only have two hours to form an opinion on something that takes forty-plus to complete, your view is going to be a little skewed. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2024, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/film-critic-armond-white-for-real-or-a-troll/544144/42 "2024-06-12T16:50:17Z")
Armond White reviews _The Acolyte_: > **[The Acolyte Bastardizes Star Wars | National Review](https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/the-acolyte-bastardizes-star-wars/)** > > Disney’s latest reformation ignites a battle between geeks and feminists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/film-critic-armond-white-for-real-or-a-troll/544144.md?page=2)