Friday, April 13, 2012

Who Needs Meta When You've Got One Great Critic.

AreWeAllPaulineNow
Kael-O-MaticTroubleVille


I have a confession to make.

I love movie reviews - good, bad and indifferent.

Heckfire, and this I really hate to admit, but I actually kinda/sorta arrange my dead-tree newspaper buying around movie criticism these days.

It's so bad that my kids are always imploring me to see more actual movies rather than just reading about them.

Anyway, back in the days when we used to live in the Bay Area I used to read Mick LaSalle's stuff a lot more often than I do now.

I think I better change that, pronto.

Because LaSalle's review of the Farrelly Brothers 'Three Stooges' phenocopy (which is the opposite of Manohla Dargis' btw) is nothing short of breathtaking:

It starts like this:

It's just not enough to say that "The Three Stooges," the latest from the Farrelly brothers, is the death of comedy. Rather, it's the death, burial, putrefaction and decomposition of comedy. It is where comedy, once alive, ends up as dust blowing in the wind, like something out of a really bad Kansas song...

And from there only gets better.

Man, oh man.

Is that fantastic or what?


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Why are R.Tomatoes/M.Critic aggregated mean numbers so dumbass?....Dargis number is '90', while La Salle's is '0' (yes, zero)...Average = 45...Middlin' right?....Are you by crakey jokin' me...How could this thing possibly be middlin'?...Ha!

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3 comments:

Ian said...

RossK
Before the movie was the trailer. Worst trailer ever!

RossK said...

Negative a billion?

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Rev.Paperboy said...

as a one-time professional critic, let me make a confession. Critics love it when the studios drop one of these kinds of birthday cake sized turds.
Do you have any idea how much fun it is to write a scorched earth review of something that is so crass, cynical and shabby? For the critic, especially in film and music, must wade thru greasy marketing sleazery every day and wallow in the horror of mainstream hollywood.
So when something fresh comes along with a new idea, critics get a major artistic boner for it, even if the new idea isn"t that new, or its not really that well executed - at least it is someone trying something new.
But this movie? this is grave robbing of a treasured memory from childhood. Something nearly approaching innocence that we all shared by watching old Three Stooges shorts on TV after school or on a Sunday morning or late nights on some weird little local station. Any critic with a shred of soul left will crap all over this movie with great relish and a clear conscience.
So often the critic feels the need to be responsible and restrained in describing something that they simple did not like and found lacking in artistic or technical merit. But this movie begs critics to open up that inner rage that has been building since they had to give "Transformers" two and half stars and treat a two hour toy commercial like it was the same art form as Citizen Kane.
This will be the Farelly Brothers' 'Heaven's Gate"
Critics will be competing to see how bad a review they can write, how over the top they can be in raining hellfire on this movie.