Oh, yes, right, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King movie is opening at midnight tonight. (Note that the posting times in this blog are Greenwich Mean Time, 5 hours ahead of actual time here in Montreal, at least during winter.) Meh... I already know what happens, and I don't want to face the crowds, so I'll probably just wait until January to see it. I'm just not a big LOTR fan, sorry, the films are much too serious and gravitas-filled and slow-moving for my tastes, and if I saw it at midnight, I know I'm just going to fall asleep.
Anyhow, the review tally at the RottenTomatoes.com TomatoMeter is at 69 "Fresh" and 1 "Rotten", meaning the TomatoMeter is at "only" 99% (it rounds up to the nearest whole number), and, as is pretty much the pattern when any fanboy favourite film is just a hair away from 100% on the TomatoMeter, preventing it from being the "number one bestest move ever", people pile on the one guy that didn't like it, in this case, Stephen Whitty of NJ.com, following the exact same pattern I observed when poor Brian Matherly of Daily-Reviews.com was the first TomatoMeter-certified critic not to like Spirited Away; for some reason completely unrelated to their love of their film, of course, they find something completely "unprofessional" about the review itself, they being the arbiters about what constitutes a "professional" review, with the critic never giving any "solid" reasons why they didn't care so much for the film. In other words, "It's not that he wrote a bad review, it's that the review was poorly written." Yeah, I'd believe that, perhaps, if it didn't happen every fricking time something like this happens, when a much-beloved film gets just one bad review.
I like what Zac Bertschy said in the AnimeNewsNetwork.com forum defending his not exactly positive Saint Seiya review (in which Zac said pretty much everything I've ever thought about Saint Seiya). I think it applies to all the instances of criticism for the "one bad review" of something popular.
"You people like to make up a new definition of what a "good review" is every time one pops up that you don't agree with. I get slammed on this forum nearly every time I write a bad review for something that's popular, and instead of just admitting that you disagree with the review, you sit here and slam my writing abilities and criticize the site and say the review should be taken down and all this other idiotic reactionary bullcrap. I KNOW how to write a review. Yes, the statement above should be phrased slightly differently, but I stand by what I said proudly."
The TomatoMeter overall is a useful tool, but, in cases where it's up in the high 90s but not quite at 100%, it tends to focus attention on the few bad reviews from the people whom take the TomatoMeter reading far too seriously. Also, except for kid's movies, I don't see films getting 100% to be all that much of a good thing, as critics are human beings with different tastes, and, if they ALL like a film, it often means that the film is trying to be all things to all people, aiming at the movie critic version of the "lowest common denominator", going the safe road, not challenging the viewer. I'm praying for a TomatoMeter in the 75-80% range for The Life Aquatic, which I already know I'm going to love.
(For added bonus fun, look at this AnimeNation.net forum thread about one critic's bad review of Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door (a.k.a. Cowboy Bebop: the Movie), which isn't on the site anymore, wherein they made up stuff *not even in the review* just to bash it, and I debunk the false claims about the review point-by-point...)
posted by Steve Brandon @ 12:41 AM
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