Friday Night Lights is out. Here’s a couple of reviews:
Box Office Mojo - F
Roger Ebert - 3.5 stars
Why the huge discrepancy?
Because many movie critics are self-centred snobs. Some are film-enthusuasts. Others are themself-enthusiasts. There lies the discrepancy.
Well, in this particular case, BOM is definitely in the minority. Turns out, Scott Holleran also gave a D (or worse) grade to Sky Captain & TWOT, Open Water and Stander, so I guess I have another critic I know I can safely ignore.
Because while a few things about movie making can be graded discretely (was the sound clear? the cinematography clear?) it really does come down to whether someone liked it or not. Critics see loads of movies, have lots to compare against, but it still comes down to whether you agree with that particular critics taste or not.
I generally tend to ignore critics. I used to watch Siskel & Ebert just to watch them argue. The majority of reviews I see are usually within a single grade (stars, grades, whatever they use) of the others. This was so far apart, it caught my eye.
A few years before Siskel died, he gave a positive review to a flim (WHO’S FREAKING NAME I CAN’T REMEMBER) and Evert was so digusted, he wouldn’t even review the film.
I really wish I could remember what it was. It was one of the very few times they were so far apart.
Try this experiment: go to any thread on this board that discusses a movie or director or actor. Note that some people will say “This is great!” and others will come on and say, “This really sucks!”
Why should it be any different with critics?
The only advantage critics have is that they’ve seen more movies. If “Plan 9 from Outer Space” were the only movie you ever saw, it would automatically make it the best movie you’ve ever saw. The more films you see, the better you are able to judge quality*.
*Note that quality and popularity are independent variables.
Based on recent events, I don’t need to go very far.
Because Ebert is a hack that will give most anything three stars.
I tried watching Friday Night Lights on Friday night because I was bored and had nothing better to do but only made it an hour in due to food poisoning.
The mad dash to the bathroom and the vomiting thereafter was more enjoyable than the sixty minutes of film I’d just been subjected to. I didn’t even bother going back to try to finish the movie… I just left the theatre and drove myself home.
Since Siskel died, at least.
Aesiron - Is it possible the movie was so bad for you because you were feeling unweel? Not that you have to like every movie that comes along, but because I know that if something is distracting me it makes it hard to get into a movie. For the record, I saw and enjoyed Friday Night Lights. I’m not in any way a football fan or a Billy Bob Thornton fan. I thought the performances were great, letting me feel how much pressure was on the entire team, including the coaching staff, to be flawless.
StG
I think it was Lambada, wasn’t it?
It’s possible but not likely. I also had food poisoning during Eternal Sunshine… and liked what I managed to see between my four or five visits to the bathroom. Friday Night Lights just did nothing for me and I generally like football movies despite not liking football itself.
Aesiron - I’d be finding someplace else to eat!
It’s funny - I really don’t like sports at all, but I’m a sucker for sports movies. I wonder why that is? Maybe because they distill a whole season’s worth of boring football to about 40 minutes of aired play.
StG
Heh. Different restaurants. The first was at a pub/theatre and the second time, Friday night, was from a place I’ve eaten at a dozen times before with no ill effect.
And I’m the same way about sports. Hate them with a passion but I seem to like movies about them well enough.
Ebert’s said before (in reference to complaints of why he graded some really godawful movie highly) that he doesn’t have an absolute scale, whereby 4 stars is equivalent to another Rules of the Game while one star is Showgirls. He rates his movies essentially in league with each other. That is, FNL would be compared to Varsity Blues, not the entirety of film.
Of course, there’s no way to know what movies he’s using a benchmark so some of his reviews are particularly perplexing.
Without having seen FNL, I do have to say that in the last year or so he really has been championing some awful movies.
Why’d you have to bring Showgirls into this? Now we’re in for it.
Oh, nevermind.
Ebert’s reviews are perfectly clear: he explains exactly what he thinks works and doesn’t work; what he feels is good, and what he feels is bad – and does it in some of the clearest and best-written prose in film.
The stars are for those who can’t be bothered to actually read his opinion, other than a quick good/bad dichotomy.
But film quality isn’t binary. A good film can have bad elements, and a bad film good ones. Ebert is happy to point out flaws and weaknesses, and always gives a clear explanation for why he believes so, so that you can figure out whether you agree with his premises.
However, if you think there’s nothing in between “it’s great” and “it sucks,” then you probably won’t like him.
Word, Chairman Pow and Reality Chuck. Ebert gave Spider-Man 2 **** because it fulfilled expectations for this type of movie- a light action based on a comic book- and more, not because it is necessarily as good or as meaningful as, say, 4 Little Girls. Apples and Oranges. The star-system is just too narrow and the range of cinema too broad to judge every single movie against another. And in what way is Ebert a hack? When he’s ‘right’ (I agree with his review), his column is insightful, well-written and shows off his extended knowledge of the history of cinema. As is the case when he is ‘wrong.’
Some critics have a certain disdain for their work. Some critics love movies to no end. Some critics are snobs (foreign = good, horror = bad). Some critics are pussy brown-nosers, like Leonard Maltin. Some are incisive and thoughtful like Pauline Kael was. Critics who know what they like and why they like it, are good critics, in my book. Some critics have personal drawbacks, like Rosenbaum, who has problems with a movie if he can’t reference it to 50 other movies he’s seen in order to understand it in some sort of magical hypercontext. Ebert though, I never completely get – I think sometimes he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and that determines how he feels about the movie he sees on that day. That’s why I like Rotten Tomatoes, because you can get an average opinion, and pick and choose reviews between people who like and dislike a particular movie.