Hollywood blames Internet piracy for the decline in box office dollars. Fact is, the vast majority of big studio movies released this year (and late last year) have been spectacularly mediocre.
Clyde and I — two people who used to go to the Sunday afternoon matinee so regularly we claimed to be members of “Movie Church” — are seeing fewer movies than ever … not because we’re downloading them from the Internet, but because there are fewer and fewer worthwhile movies to see.
Meanwhile, the ones we are seeing are, for the most part, completely forgettable. You wouldn’t know it, though, from reading the reviews and blurbs associated with these below-average bombs. As it turns out, all too many glowing reviews are:
– the spawn of clever marketers, who conveniently edit negative reviews into positive ones (making, for example, “It’s remarkable that a movie this bad could ever be released!” into “It’s remarkable!”)
– made up and attributed to magazines or to reviewers who never actuall reviewed the movie
– written by quote whores — reviewers who deliberately praise bad movies in return for all-expenses-paid trips to L.A. or, sadly, just to get their names featured in a print ad.
So,the bad news is: when it comes to movie blurbs, there’s lots of fakery afoot. The good news is: there are great online tools for getting past the fakery and finding out what’s really going on before you plunk down $8.50 for ticket.
MetaCritic reads dozens of reviews, generates a numeric score for each, and averages these scores into an overall rating. The MetaCritic score, by averaging together dozens of reviews, reduces the chance you’ll be misled by a “planted” review commissioned or paid for by a studio.
It’s mostly reliable — mostly, I say, because even this usually-great system awards the abysmal Hitchhiker’s Guide a 63/100.
The Blurb Racket reprints the short quotes — or “blurbs” — printed in movie ads, tracks down what a critic actually said, and prints the two side by side.
It’s pretty funny to see a line like “Travolta is smooth as ever” and discover the reviewer actually said, “While Travolta is smooth as ever, this picture is a bust.”
It’s also funny to see how “live” or “spontaneous” endorsements of the movie Cinderella Man — like Larry King’s presumably spontaeous praise for the film on Friday night’s show — were quoted in papers Friday morning (before King actually made the statement — ooops!).
CriticWatch, though apparently defunct (with no entries since 2003), provides insight into which critics are likely “quote whores,” taking money from The Man in exchange for pithy praise.
And, finally, in the spirit of things, here’s how a studio marketing department would probably edit my own review of Hitchhiker’s Guide:
“Very clever … I kept laughing out loud despite my best efforts. Witty dialogue … brilliant prose, one liners and punchlines. Glorious eye-candy … a non-stop buffet of computer animation, digital manipulation, and stunning creature effects!”
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