Criticising Criticism Series: A Rotten Tomatoes Scandal forces Me To Ask What MAKES A Critic?

 

In the 1950s the legendary producer David Merrick was about to debut a forgettable show  on Broadway called Subways are For Sleeping on Broadway. Even he knew the critics would devour it alive. So he found seven New Yorkers who happened to share the names of seven of the most prominent Broadway critics, paid for them to see the show, got to give favorable statements and printed a full-page ad in the Times saying that all seven of these ‘critics’ loved his show.

It took less than a day for his fraud to be exposed. For one thing, he showed pictures of all seven ‘critics’ in the ad and they did not match. Indeed ‘Walter Kerr’ was shown as an African-American man. The fraud was quickly pointed out and the ad was pulled. But the trick worked: this mediocre show ran for nearly a year and made a profit.

This gambit came to mind almost immediately after I saw a recent ‘expose’ in New York magazine about how Rotten Tomatoes, the website that is the prominent source for filmgoers as to whether a movie is any good had essentially been abused by studios over the past several years who have used ‘less reputable critics’ and in some cases random individuals to write positive reviews to inflate the scores on the blog. It also revealed that the algorithm had always been faulty and reading reviews, that the formulas had always been skewed by white males and that they did major ‘damage to criticism and movies’

Now as a critic I realize I should feel some kind of outrage or even disappointment at this news that the credibility of my profession has been affected by this ‘scandal.  However, I remember three reactions:

 

1.      Isn’t this adorable?

2.      Why didn’t I get in on the action, and

3.      Only a New York publication would bother with this at all.

 

I have been aware in the vaguest of senses of Rotten Tomatoes, of course, ever since it came along but I never remember looking at in online, using it to make a judgment on films, and certainly not caring about a film’s score. In fact, until two years ago I’m not sure I would have even been aware of it except in a vague sense.

Then two years ago, I moved into a new apartment and as part of my cable guide, every film has a rotten tomatoes rating next to it. (Two, I’m still not sure what the difference between the two is, and I still don’t care enough to find out.) Honestly, even with it front and center with every film I’ve watched since then I can say with full honesty it has not made an ounce of difference in how I view even the films I watch now.  I didn’t bother to find out how they came up with their ratings and even I’d considered them pure as the driven snow, I would have been inclined to dismiss them as a matter of course.  It’s not merely because I don’t believe you should base your decision to watch or even like a film based on what the majority of people; it’s also because over the last couple of years, I’ve come to question what qualifies so many critics to think they can like a film at all.

I’ve stated on numerous occasions about so many of the fundamental flaws in both individual critics and their role in the industry as a whole and it is not until this ‘scandal’  came on my radar that I actually thought to ask a question that I’ve never considered it the first place: what does qualify someone to be a critic?  Since so many people seem concerned about the fate of legitimate criticism, I think it’s time we ask: what makes a critic legitimate?

In the more than a century of Hollywood’s existence has anyone even bothered to ask the qualifications of a critic? Criticism has taken on the aura of some kind of higher calling, a noble profession, a defense of the art against the Philistines. All it’s ever been is little more than a glorified op-ed about something that was designed for mass consumption. Years ago I saw a documentary where several comedians and actors actually raised this point, asking what qualifies people like Roger Ebert and Kenneth Turan to hate their work. I dismissed it at the time –  I don’t think Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore can truly being considered impartial observes, considering their movies are the subject of so much vitriol – but the question is actually pertinent.

Seriously are their any qualifications required to become a film critic? Is there some kind of school you have to go to, a test you have to pass, a ritual you have to undergo?  All you have to be able to do to become a film critic is know how to write well and appear to know what you’re talking about. I can clearly do both and was able to have a certain grip on that by the time I was twenty-five. Does that mean I could have just walked up to the Chicago Sun-Times and be hired to replace Gene Siskel?

I don’t mean to malign my profession but looking at so many of my fellow film critics I often have had cause to wonder about that. Indeed, reading the work of David Denby and Anthony Lane, I often wonder if they even like their jobs very much or indeed movies at all? I’ve been reading their columns for more than twenty years – after a while I stopped, and if you’ve read this series you have a very good idea as to why – but I ask that question not only with them but so many other critics.  Considering that they de facto seem to hate ninety percent of the movies made today and don’t seem to much like most of the movies made in the recent past, you really wonder why they bother to go to the movies anymore? Roger Ebert may have despaired of the state of the industry but I never got a sense that he truly hated his job or even most of the films he saw.  I’m beginning to think that the sole reason for every critic to get up in the morning is to shit on a filmmaker’s work.

And this actually gets me to another point that is worth considering: why have we spent so much time over the last century certain that all of these men – and to be clear, until fairly recently this has been almost entire a white man’s game – have some kind of deeper understanding of what makes a film a masterpiece than us mere plebians. I actually have some personal experience with this.

During the period we were in lockdown, my parents went through a long period in which they chose to watch some of the greatest movies ever made. They used Roger Ebert’s books for many of their choices; they did some research on their own and they asked me to order the films on streaming and, in some cases, on DVD.

Now my parents are not film critics, though given the fact that they are white and old, they meet at least two of the major qualifications most film critics seem to have. But they know what they like and they have  a certain appreciation for what works for them and what doesn’t. They’ve had strong opinions over the years; I’ve agreed with some, disagreed with others, but I’ve never dismissed any of them outright.

So when they tell me that they have watched such ‘classics’ as Last Year at Marienbad and Rules of The Game and tell me that they can’t understand them, much less comprehend what makes them great, I’m inclined to hear them out. They have their likes and dislikes – my father likes Ingmar Bergman, who my mother can not stand; my mother likes Truffaut, which my father is up and down about and both can find the appeal in Bunuel and Fassbinder, at least some of their films.  Both of them adore Steven Spielberg, have no use for comic book movies and think that the last line of Some Like It Hot is perfect.  How are either of them any less – or more – qualified than anybody working at the Times today?  

And I have my own experience with this. There are so many examples that I could give, but I’m going to stick with relatively recent films.

I have always loved the Coen Brothers. I thought Fargo was a masterpiece and that Barton Fink was remarkable. I thought the Oscars made a major mistake when they basically ignored The Man Who Wasn’t There and I adore The Big Lebowski. But when my family and I went to see No Country for All Men, which was in the midst of its roll for its sweep of the Oscars, I was horrified in a way that few films have done to me before or since.

I’ve seen more violent films in my life and certainly more gory ones – I’ve watched my share of Tarantino and with the sole exception of Reservoir Dogs I’ve been okay with it. No Country struck me when I saw it then, and still does today, as little more than glorified snuff film with no real point to it.  I sat through the entire film and have made no effort to see it since – indeed, if I come across accidentally on TV I immediately change the channel/.

The veneration for this film appalls me. The Academy Awards I can let go of – I knew even then how flawed they were – but the idea that so many critics worshipped it made me truly question the viability of the profession I was leaning towards (in TV, not film). And it also made me question so much of my own movie watching over the years that had passed: how many films was I sure that I had liked just because a bunch of critics had said that it was glorious?

There’s an argument that, for all the esteem this profession seems to have, at its core the film critic is little more than an influencer, trying to make you love or hate any major project based solely on their opinion alone.  Am I being ridiculous comparing somewhat like Richard Corliss to someone on Tik Tok? I don’t think so. Harlan Ellison had a film column for a while, and Stephen King reviewed both movies and TV for Entertainment Weekly for more than a decade. I won’t deny that either man isn’t a great writer, but what makes them more qualified  a critic than any contemporary who had the job?

I don’t necessarily extend this to any filmmaker who makes these judgments, but they too have the problem that all of them have the rose-colored glasses of what they consider a great film and what you might.  Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg may very well consider 2001 one of the greatest films ever made. I’ve tried to watch it half a dozen times; I can’t get through the first ten minutes. Now in their case, I can understand why they’d think that way, Roger Ebert, not so much. He is by far my favorite critics but it does not mean he was incapable of making lapses in judgment (see my article on Last Tango in Paris.)

So in a sense all of this argument about how much the Rotten Tomatoes scandal has damaged criticism comes as a tempest in a teapot, particularly for one huge reason. It has been half a century at a minimum since a critics has affected was an audience will do and we all know. The Transformers and Twilight movies have among the lowest collective scores on Rotten Tomatoes; we all know that it didn’t stop millions of people going to see them. Roger Ebert might have  named The Dark Knight one of the best films of 2008. Nearly twenty years earlier he panned Tim Burton’s Batman. I don’t think either review had an effect on the box office of either.

I think at its core, the people in movies know this. This ‘expose’ concluded with Paul Schrader making the most concrete statement: “If a three hour movie that was about a housewife in the Alps scored at 90 percent and a movie about a serial killer in Alaska scored fifty percent, I think most people have made up their own minds which they’ll see first.” And he’s right. He may hate it at his core – I can’t imagine there’s a major creative force in Hollywood who likes this – but Hollywood is a business and the people in have to go where the money is. Martin Scorsese might not think that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is real moviemaking and right now many of the people who were in the films think that way. But as long as they keep making money films like those will get all the attention, and Scorsese will struggle to get films like Killers of The Flower Moon in theaters.

I think the argument for legitimate criticism being damaged is an argument that only matters to critics for a simple reason. They want to feel that they have influence over the industry whose products they review. They don’t, they never have and I think that infuriates them. That very reason may be why so many people were recruited to write phony reviews by the studios. They did have influence over the industry in a way that almost all of these legitimate critics never will. That it damaged the profession does not change that fact, nor does it change the fact the value of the profession is something that matters more to those in it than the majority of the public – including the people who work in Hollywood.

As for me, I have no fewer illusions about my chosen profession than when I read this ‘expose’ in the first place because, at least when I choose to criticize something, I have done everything in my power to keep an open mind about any major television show I have seen over the years. I have also found the flexibility to do what so many critics have done: change my mind after a period of years have gone by, either positively or negatively.  And I’ve always made it clear in my reviews these are mine opinions alone and that you are free to discount them if you don’t feel the same.

Over and over you hear the question: does criticism matter? I think it does. But it must be clear in a way most of my colleagues refuse to acknowledge is that it is not some judgment from on high but little more than an opinion piece from someone who has their own reasons for their way of thinking and is as much subject to flaws as the rest of us.  Read criticism, look online, hell, even look at Rotten Tomatoes, even given this. But never let that be the final arbiter from choosing what you want to see or liking what you want to like. If you think Paddington 2 is a better movie than Citizen Kane, it’s not my place to judge. Don’t let someone tell you any different because they know how to turn a  phrase better than you.