Why Film Critics Are Important

I don't usually partake in much serious cinematic criticism/analysis (beyond the casual conversation with friends over drinks). Erik and Lyrad are both far more adept and informed than I am in the film-criticism department.

However, I can't help but be bothered by producer Brian Robbins' comments about critics. For those (like me) who didn't/don't know Robbins' name, he's apparently the producer of both "Norbit" and "Wild Hogs." In response to the question of how Norbit and Wild Hogs can do so well despite getting killed by critics, he asks: "How do you figure that? Is the audience that stupid? Is America's taste that bad?" He thinks the answer is "no" I strongly disagree, but the bigger problem isn't whether the audience is stupid now or not - it's the role films now have in further undermining intelligent audiences. As late as the 1970s, challenging, provocative works were popular among audiences, and there wasn't this fear of thinking at movies (see, for example, many people's current aversions to foreign films because they "don't want to read".) I don't know where or how things got so dumbed down that now we can have dreck like "Wild Hogs," "Norbit" (the best comment on the latter coming from The Onion - "Eddie Murphy fucks self for $20 million"), or, to take a non-Robbins production, Kangaroo Jack. I'm guessing it was the 80s (such landmarks as "Short Circuit" and its sequel or "Howard the Duck"), but I could be wrong. What I do know is that, in answer to Robbins, audiences may not actually be that stupid, but at the same time, they don't treat films as something worth thinking about in the way they once did.

Secondly, there is his complaint that "The only films that get good reviews are the ones that nobody sees. I just don't think you can make movies for critics." This is just disturbing to me on a couple of levels. First and foremost, there is this troubling notion that the population can't like films that critics do, something which is clearly not the case (for recent examples of fine films that both critics and audiences loved, see "Little Miss Sunshine", "The Departed", and "Borat"). Second, and less important but worth saying is that I'm pretty sure that people don't make movies "just for critics". Maybe I'm naive, but I was under the impression that a lot of movies were made the way they were made because of a director's and/or producer's and/or writer's particular "artistic" (I use the term loosely) vision.

Finally (and this leads back to Robbins comments on audience intelligence), when idiots like Robbins shoot their mouths off about critics, they reinforcee an anti-critical culture in America. Critics are no more infallible than anybody else. Their jobs are to express their informed views - whether the reader agrees or not is up to the reader. I remember somebody once telling me that they had a simple "movies to see" system - if Pauline Kael loved it, they skipped it; if she hated it, they saw it. This was simply because this person knew what Pauline Kael liked and did not in terms of esthetics, stories, etc., and he knew what he liked. He didn't stop reading critics altogether - he simply tried to interpret their opinions and adjust them to his own film preferences. It still involved critical thinking, both within the theater and in reading the reviews. Yet Robbins, like so many influences in society today, seems to think that critical thinking should be verboten - that all decisions should be based on knee-jerk opinions and reactions.

Part of me hopes that people, both producers and viewers, won't take Robbins' comments to heart, but a bigger part of me isn't sure it matters. My deep guess (and fear) is that Robbins isn't necessarily a cause of the problem with the American population and its film preferences - he's a symptom.