Or more charitably the fact that it may seem fresh and interesting. In reverse, even very crappy stereotypical dreck hollywood might seem pretty novel and amusing if you’d never seen anything like it.
When I lived in Berlin, I used to get paid to review films at the Berlin FilmFest.
Sounds cool, but let me tell ya - there is lots of crap that makes it to film festivals. A few were very, very good - but I would say about 50% were truly horrible, another 25% were OK at best and the top 25% ranged from “interesting” to “wow!”
The problem as an American reviewer was to think, “Will Americans want to sit through this film with subtitles?” That is tricky. It is easy for me to watch a German film (as I understand German) and say this is excellent - but know full well that few Americans will want to sit through it and might not get some of the cultural references. Thus, the only films that actually do make it to the US are usually the best of the best, and for the most part, worth “struggling” with subtitles.
As far as bad foreign language films - one that is memorable was a film that was hyped at the Berlin festival that was from India. I went into a full theater of reviewers. By the time this very lengthy film was half over, I was the ONLY person left in the theater - all the others had left. (Call me weird, but I never, ever left a screening until the film was over - hoping for some grand ending or something to save even the worst of films). At any rate, the film FINALLY ends (I think it was close to three hours) and I dragged myself out of the theater and, awkwardly, there was the director, the producer and two of the stars of the film standing there in front of me! All smiles, the director introduced himself and said, “How did you like the film?!”
First of all, they must have noticed I was the only person left in the theater. I was so caught off guard…but I covered well. I complimented the actors and said they portrayed their roles realistically (true - they were playing unsympathetic and boring characters - not the actors’ fault) and I told the director that he certainly covered a lot of material (geez was that film LONG) and told the producer that this would be a hard sell in America as the subject material was not what American audiences would normally watch (AKA really boring).
They seemed quite pleased with my comments and I dashed off.
“Irreversible” is one of the more popular foreign films that has been imported to the US in recent years (mostly, granted, due to the rape scene), but that has only a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Although that’s still mostly positive, not every critic raved about it.
It’s impossible to know whether the average filmgoer in the U.S. would like foreign films as much as American ones since they don’t have the chance to see them. There’s no way then to compare the reaction of average moviegoers in the U.S. with average movie critics in the U.S. to foreign films since the film critics have seen a reasonable number of foreign films and the average moviegoer has seen very few of them.
Jonathan Rosenbaum is probably as close to being the stereotype of a film critic who likes foreign films more than American ones as anyone alive (and he like independent American films more than blockbusters):
http://www.alsolikelife.com/FilmDiary/rosenbaum.html
Still, the point is that Rosenbaum isn’t typical of American film reviewers. Not that many people even read Rosenbaum’s reviews. Most American film reviewers are much closer to average filmgoers in seeing relatively few foreign films and not particularly giving them good reviews. Also, I find something weird about complaining about Rosenbaum’s tastes. Here’s a guy who’s gone out of his way to educate himself on something that most people haven’t bothered to experience at all - foreign films and independent American ones. He’s willing to tell you about them. You’re complaining that you want to listen to a movie critic who’s seen just the films that you have and has the same tastes that you have. Then go listen to someone else and don’t complain about Rosenbaum.
I really don’t understand why people think that film critics (as a group) are genre snobs. While the high RT scores of the first two Spiderman films (90 and 93%) are mentioned upthread, the 3rd film sits at 62%. You see that a lot of times for movies in a series. (Terminator movies: 100(!), 97, 70, 32.) Some movies in a genre are good and some are bad.
Yet Another Highly Popular Film With Glowing Reviews: “Iron Man” 93% at RT with over $300M domestic box office. OTOH the new Transformers movies sits at 19%. So it’s not such a good movie.
Cantinflas and Bollywood didn’t get a lot of respect here until recently; it’s not like American critics bend over for anything foreign. Certain factors make it likely for a European film to hit America’s “Art House” circuit, a process that weeds out over 99% of available foreign releases.
That said, Pedro Aldomovar has certainly gotten a long free ride here.
Actually, this isn’t completely true. Some of the international directors that are generally acknowledged as some of the best living today–Theo Angelopoulos, Bela Tarr, Hsiao-hsien Hou, Eric Rohmer, Manoel de Oliveira–virtually never get American distribution, despite being the “best of the best”. The problem is that, while their films are remarkable, they’re also very challenging and unconventional, even for the most seasoned cinephile.
So while quality (and critical reception abroad) generally play a big part in winnowing the field of foreign films to reach our screens, gauging how accessible they will be even to arthouse audiences (regardless of how good) is another important component.