10 Spectacularly Wrong Movie Reviews
What film is "a theme park ride masquerading as master's thesis"?
As the saying goes, opinions are like bumholes. Everybody has one, most of them stink, and often you should keep them to yourself. Some of us, however, make exposing said bumhol-erm, opinions their career. So long as there has been art there have been people who have critiqued it, professionally. Some of the lucky devils even get paid for it. Said critics usually end up reaching some sort of a consensus about a piece of art, which is why we get, say, video games that are generally reviled or paintings that are held up as the pinnacle of human achievement. Most people will agree that something is really good, or utter tosh (or else consign it to be forgotten in the column of mediocrity).
But then there are the objectors, the contrarians, the reviewers who decide to break away from the herd. There are films that are part of the canon of classics, the indisputable top 10 (or 100, or 1000) sacred cows that nobody would even dream of slaughtering, because everybody knows they're perfect. Then there are the Ed Woods of the world, who make films that nobody will stand up to defend. They'll get laughed at. Imagine telling somebody that you thought that Adam Sandler was the best living actor, or Plan 9 From Outer Space is an overlooked masterpiece - you'd be a laughing stock. There are things that we've decided are infallibly great, and others undoubtedly !*$%.
Which is where the contrarians come in. The people who do stand up for the terrible films, or tear down the movies everybody else loves. They do it in video games, too, but there's something more galling about somebody singing the virtues of Eddie Murphy whilst taking pot shots at David Fincher. Another saying: everybody's entitled to their opinion. But we'll add the addendum: No matter how wrong they are. These are ten spectacularly wrong movie reviews.