Thanks to the internet, film criticism is more prominent than ever. And while the sheer amount of retrospective reviews and commentaries now published online mean much of what you read will be glowing praise, it's always more fun to read a litany of hate. And the angrier the review, the more fun the read. In fact, sometimes the film in question is so bad that the levels of vitriol are raised and the piece becomes a hatchet job, with little in the way of reason or critical thinking and much in the way of outcry and anger. This fate befalls all kinds of films, from obvious schlock like Freddie Got Fingered - which gave us the great Roger Ebert line "This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." - to classics that might need taking down a peg or two. No film is safe from the potential swing of a hatchet. For a contemporary example, look no further than Pan, Atonement director Joe Wright's new big-budget version of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the reviews of which have been damning. Here are five examples, some famous, some not as well known, of influential film critics abandoning their professionalism to denounce and defame films that they truly, irredeemably hated.
