MOVIES: Criticizing the Critics

You read them. You saw them as they flew into your face from the TV screen. You wondered how much it cost for studio advertisers to slash them across the newspaper page with such bold font.

“The summer’s hottest comedy. Hilarious.”

“Move over ‘Matrix,’ here comes…A mesmerizing sci-fi masterpiece…”

“Not since…has there been a movie so moving…”

Just about all of them promise, “You’ll love it.” So, you go. You pay. You watch. You contemplate “loving it.” You don’t. None of your friends cared for it either. No one you know so much as liked it. One guy you worked with walked out because the morbidly obese woman next to him fell asleep and drooled on his popcorn.

So, why would a supposedly qualified film critic go out of his or her way to rant and rave about such a bomb?

Maybe they’re just flat wrong. After all, critics are human and any art form is a subjective exercise. Of course, there are also two uglier possibilities: They were intentionally misquoted by movie advertisers, or, worse, they were somehow bought off to provide the desired positive review.

According to Peter Woodke, an entertainment attorney and media specialist working out of the San Francisco Bay area, the movie buyer must beware when looking through the movie ads:

“Sometimes advertisers never actually quote any critic. They simply display their own ad copy as if a critic said it. If you put it big enough letters with quotation marks around the words, it looks like a critic said it when some copywriter came up with the ‘review.’”

Woodke explained, “Also, advertisers can cover their bases by generalizing. For example, you’ll hear, ‘The critics agree…’ What critics? Well, unless someone wants to hold the studio’s feet to the fire, you’ll never know. You’d have to prove ‘the critics don’t agree,’ or force the studio to name the critics supposedly out their raving about the given film to prove false advertising.”

“No one has the time or the drive to do either. So, the practice continues.”

Michael Orsi, one of several publicity executives for Fox, said it’s that department’s job to put a positive spin on any film they promote.

“It’s not our job to judge the quality of the films we promote,” Orsi said. “We have to present a positive image for those pictures.”

More than a master of the obvious, Orsi added, “But, that never gives us the right to lie or fabricate a positive review. If an advertisement promises a movie is exciting or funny without attribution, that’s presented as the opinion of the studio or filmmakers. If you see it attributed to a critic, the responsibility stays there.”

“We do not edit reviews to put a spin on quotes, and we do not fabricate critical comments, positive or negative.”

(If you expected this reporter to find a single entertainment publicity executive willing to go on the record and admit such shenanigans happen, you deserve to be taken in by a few phony reviews.)

But, what about real reviews or critical comments rearranged to sound upbeat. You can make any negative statement sound positive with editing. The review, “A really great, big piece of a garbage of a movie…” could edit neatly down to “A really great movie.”

Scott Renshaw, a film critic based in Salt Lake City, writes reviews for several print and Internet publications. He’s the perfect person to ask about potential misquotes or selective editing of bad reviews to appear positive because he’s a professional, but not too much of a big shot that the studios couldn’t miss with his words. They’re not likely to play around with Roger Ebert’s review, but an on-line or small town radio critic is perfect fodder.

“I’ve never been misquoted in a film’s promotional advertisements or seen a falsified review credited to me,” Renshaw said. “I have seen selected quotes pulled out for review on archive or index Internet sites. Occasionally, I have found the quote less than ideally representative.”

Renshaw added that the offense was not worth “raising a stink.”

Could a filmmaker bribe a critic into a good review with money, free tickets or other favors? Absolutely — and some small-time critics eat it up.

Renshaw spits it out: “I will absolutely not accept those kinds of offers. I’ve had a couple independent filmmakers offer to send me video screeners of their films for review, but they never made any suggestion that I should review in a certain way, or offered anything. So, I accepted the favor and reviewed honestly.”

Renshaw added, “ I’ve talked to a few critics with a higher profile than mine. No one I know has ever been offered anything explicitly in exchange for positive reviews. The studios aren’t that stupid. The more common practice is to use junket privileges as the carrot for ‘cooperative’ critics.”

In the end, maybe any film viewer who finds him/herself taken in by such Hollywood hubbub deserves to be duped. Film critics can serve a valuable artistic purpose by pointing you in the right direction, but it’s your call in the end. So, take those critical bullet points with a grain of popcorn salt at the movies.