Criticize This

I have a confession to make. I saw, on the day it opened no less, Transformers. Now calm down. No, there was no gun to my head, I was not taking my ten year old cousin, and was not on a date with the nerdy chick from accounting. I saw it of my own free will. Actually, I wanted to see it.

And the truth is, it wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was pretty good, in a way that eating a Big Mac is pretty good. Compared to filet mignon, it sucks ass, but for what it is, it meets expectations. And Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is exactly what you would think: a loud, thunderous movie, instantly forgettable yet still worth the ticket price for the close to three hours of entertainment it provides. I laughed, I cried, and (ok well, I didn’t cry) I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Which is why the over-the-top negative reviews are interesting. The critics are making this out to be the second coming of Gigli, an experience so offensive that the Republicans should propose legislation against it (It's a joke Newt. Put the phone down). Matt Paris of the Chicago Tribune called it “A 150-minute simulation of life in a garbage disposal." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone pines that "Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness." And no less that Roger Ebert, certainly past his prime but still well-respected, calls it “"...a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments." I cannot help but wonder where all this hostility stems from.

The real question is, what was expected? After all, it is titled “Transformers,” right? Now, I understand the merits of good moviemaking. Every year, I make it a point to see every Best Picture nominee, from the brilliant “Milk” to the over-rated “The Reader.” I even sat through that obnoxiously long “Benjamin Button” movie (on that note, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett? Really? The best Brad can do is Cate Blanchett? Now, had Megan Fox been in her place….). And while I make no pretense of being an accomplished critic, I am a fairly good judge of the art of the motion picture, and appreciate when it is well done. There is no question the new “Transformers” Movie will not win best picture.

But, here’s the kicker. It wasn’t trying. It made no attempt to be an Oscar winner, or even a nominee. It wasn’t looking to be compared with The Piano or Driving Miss Daisy; it simply didn’t care. How this simple fact was overlooked by the so-called critics in unknown, but perhaps they simply chose to ignore it. In years past the critics served the vital role of setting our expectations of the picture; a useful tool used to determine if one should fork over the mortgage payment in exchange for two hours on a Saturday night. We found out the basics from respected reviews: what was the plot, who was in it, and is it worth seeing.

Today, things are different. Everyone with a blog is a critic. Even worse, they don’t even need to be writers, they just film a review and throw it up on youtube. The goal has gone from giving an objective look at a movie to standing out in a crowd of movie genius also-rans, a feat most often accomplished by giving the most outlandish review possible. The site Rotten Tomatoes, which monitors critic’s reactions to a film, offers a link to each review and an area where the average reader can comment on the review itself. Now we have critics of the critics. More importantly, bad reviews are money. The comments following a negative reviews far outnumber those following a positive one. Writing a biting, satirical review goes a lot farther in getting a critics once obscure name in the paper, forever to the detriment to the genuine critics that still exist.

Yet despite all the negative reviews, Transformers raked in 390 million dollars in its’ first five days worldwide. Perhaps the overwhelming negativity is reducing these “critics” to what they really should be: irrelevant.