Add me to the Last Airbender club. I usualy disregard the reviews I read and onl read them to compare my my opinions against professionals. However, the Last Airbender got the worst most vicious review I’ve ever seen. Worse than Gigli. It’s safe to say it’s not worth my time.
Wait. Do you count threads on here? Because that’s what told me that Airbender was going to suck. I wasn’t planning on seeing it in theater, but I was planning to rent it eventually.
EVER? Yes, but not the way you think.
That is, I’ve NEVER passed on seeing a movie I was eager to see just because Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs down, or Jay Sherman yelled “It stinks.” I have so little respect for film, TV and music critics that their opinions mean LESS than nothing to me.
But a few times, critics have tipped me off that a movie being marketed one way was actually something else entirely. When that’s happened, I’ve sometimes skipped movies I would have gone to see.
Best example? When The Crying Game first came out, most ads and most critics made it out to be a gripping story about the IRA. John Simon was the one reviewer who saw fit to give away the “twist.” Based on that revelation, I opted not to see it*
- until months later, when the woman I was dating wanted to see it, and I couldn’t refuse without telling her why, which would have ruined it for her, so… I went. And it wound up being a so-so movie (interesting as long as it dealt with the IRA, boring as hell once the focus went to Dil).
P.S. My date figured out Dil was a transvestite the instant he/she appeared on screen!
It has stopped me from seeing plenty of movies. But on the other hand really good reviews have made me want to see movies I may have otherwise skipped.
For example Source Code was never even on my radar and and would probably be long forgotten by now. However, great word of mouth and reviews have made it a priority for me to catch on DVD.
For the extreme example of this, when The King’s Speech came to the on-campus discount theater, I literally knew absolutely nothing about it other than that it had won the Best Picture, and maybe seen the poster. But I figured, I had an evening free, and I might as well give it a try.
And really, when you get right down to it, the Academy Awards are just extremely emphatic movie reviews.
This. I have better things to do than spend two hours (and $10-15) watching something that isn’t at least above mediocre.
Ha, yes! This one! I saw the trailer & thought it looked cool, the cast was pretty good, but then when it opened the reviews were so bad I completely lost interest. Still have not seen it.
That said, I don’t actually read any *specific *reviews, I just look at the overview to get a sense of what the general feeling on a film is.
Defining ‘reviews’ as not just the Ebert/Shalit variety but ratings on imdb and RT, then yes. Insidious comes to mind as a fairly recent one.
**Has a movie review ever stopped you from seeing a movie you had planned on seeing? **
… a/k/a “The Last Airbender effect”. 
I’m gonna go ahead and say no. I’ve never needed it to happen because I have a good radar when it comes to movies and only see the ones I’m going to see. Rarely will I see one I don’t want to.
My SO and I go to see a movie almost every Friday in a movie theater.
I usually check Rotten Tomatoes beforehand - and if they are starting to show only 30% positive reviews or something equally bad, we will often pass on a film and wait for DVD or for it to come on Showtime or HBO.
(I wish I had believed the reviews of Hangover II - but we stupidly went to see it anyway…).
There have been some exceptions - Burlesque got horrible reviews, but we were not expecting much when we went to see it, went with a friend and the three of us liked it for being sort of a camp romp with some fun musical numbers. Could easily have waited for DVD, but didn’t regret seeing it on the big screen.
I guess it depends on what we are looking for - if it is just the “big screen” experience, and maybe not so much great art, then why not?
Years ago, I was planning to see The Last Unicorn, then read a review that gave away the movie’s ending. I suppose the reviewer thought he could do it because it was a “children’s movie”, and children wouldn’t be reading his review. This was before reviewers started writing SPOILER ALERT. I was so annoyed that I skipped the movie.