I used to enjoy reading reviews. I lived for Ebert and Roeper’s “Thumbs up or Thumbs Down”, I loved when our own local critics gave movies and theatre reviews with a letter grade A, B, B+ or a C even. For a long time, you’d even see a star rating system in the papers, which was my all-time fave. I really built a whole system of how good movies were, based on those star ratings! 1-star movies were garbage, 2 or 2 and half star movies were “wait for video” kind of films, 3-star movies were always the best and the ones almost everyone in the family could agree on (Disney films always fall in the 3-star category), and 4-star movies were usually the kind that won academy awards!
I could virtually COUNT on this system. But now adays, everyone’s a critic. And maybe that’s ok. Family members used to accuse me of listening too much to the critics. Watch the movie and form your own opinion, Shannon! But I’d be damned if I was going to pay $10 bucks (yeah kids it used to be 10…and a heck of a lot less) to go to the movies to watch a 1-star movie! And once Rotten Tomatoes came out? 40% was my limit! If that Tomato meter went below 40 %, there was no way I was paying good money to leave my house!
Now of course, we know Rotten Tomatoes is a flawed system and everybody from myself to the eleven-year-old next door has a blog, a podcast and a YouTube channel dedicated to their own personal opinion on movies. And let’s face it, most of those opinions are negative. And jee whiz is it ever depressing!
Three movies have opened this last week that I have been pumped to see! But before each one of them even hit the big screen, my Tik, Tok, Facebook and YouTube channels were blown apart with dozens of “Thumbs Down” reviews of the worst kind. You’d have thought everyone had just walked away from Jaws the Revenge or Waterworld! And these reviews weren’t coming from total strangers either. They were coming from folks I respect! The level of negativity heaped on these three films by professional and semi-professional reviewers alike is nearly unprecedented and I would argue, just unnecessary.
I KNOW we are all desperate for new material, and so the Hunger Games pre-qual seems like over-kill (no pun intended) But man, I really wanted to go as soon as I saw that trailer. Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis and Rachel Zegler? Come on! But the reviews are all over the place! Metacritic: 54/100, 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Which isn’t horrible per se. But the audience score? It’s 90% folks. That’s a massive difference.
And while I understand that we have Marvel fatigue I truly do NOT get the hate for Brie Larson as Captain Marvel. The original movie remains one of my all-time favorites and yet every, single man I know despises the film and reminds me that Brie Larson doesn’t understand her character and “still has trouble mastering the complexity of Captain Marvel.” WHAT??? Does anyone say that shit about any other character in the MCU?? Of course not! I REALLY wanted to take my three nieces to The Marvels. But I haven’t because the miserable level of negativity hurled at the film before it even came out was downright depressing. And yet, it beats Hunger Games on Rotten Tomatoes at 62% (Tho its audience score is slightly lower at 83%) Audiences from Cinemascore rate it a B overall!
And what do you all have against Wish?!?! Disney’s 100-year celebration movie landed with a 49% splat on Rotten Tomatoes this weekend. Why?! Coincidentally its audience score is running at 82%. Which isn’t surprising. I saw it with my friend Shawn Forster on Saturday night (the only person you should go see Disney movies with when you are an unapologetic Disney nerd, is the one person you know is a bigger Disney nerd than you!)
Now, does Wish have flaws? Yeah. Do I care? No! I think we may have reached a point in our movie going experiences where we expect 4 or 5 stars every time a movie comes out and I don’t think that’s fair. In fact, I think it’s actually ridiculous. Again, remember my star system: 4 stars = Oscar bait. The kind of film that as a young adult I couldn’t really wrap my head around. Stuff that was worthy of a college English class. Stuff I knew in my heart was good, but maybe I didn’t need to see more than once. Oppenheimer fits this category. I know this movie is Oscar worthy. I saw it, I acknowledge its greatness, I expect it to win Oscars. But I will not watch it on repeat.
2-star movies are movies you watch on repeat. They are the movies that become cult classics. The ones you have all of the lines memorized for. Ghostbusters, The Breakfast Club. All of our favorite 80’s films.
Disney and Marvel films hang out in that 3-star area. They are really good movies. They have style. They have action and magic. We love seeing them on the big screen because they look amazing. I want to see them a few times because there is always something I missed the first time around. I can’t wait to own them on DVD/blue ray and watch them on my huge tv at home and blast everyone out of the room with my huge sound system!
Sometimes, every once in a while, 3-star movies transcend to 4-star movies…Toy Story 3, Wall-E, Up, Black Panther, Infinity War, End Game, Into the Spider Verse etc….But when we start to expect that level of greatness all of the time, kids, we are bound to be disappointed.
I enjoyed Wish. I enjoyed watching it with Shawn because we love Disney. I appreciate every single second of time and effort that went into the movie, as I have for every movie I have ever seen of Disney’s. I love looking for Easter eggs, (of which there are over 100 for the 100th anniversary of Disney. How exquisite!) I love animation and I always have. I love animal sidekicks and I never get tired of them. I love crazy evil villains who sing songs! I love magic and fairy tales and kingdoms and fantasy and books that open at the beginnings of cartoons. And if you still love all of those things, then you will be satisfied with this 3-star film. Because that’s what it is.
Maybe The Marvels is a 2-star movie, Maybe the Hunger Games prequal is a 2- and 1/2-star movie. Be ok with that. Be happy that neither of them is 1 star. Not everything needs to be a 4.
