Thursday, March 03, 2005

Watch Out: In some ways, I'm the perfect audience for most genre movies. I am absolutely and completely willing to suspend my disbelief. You will never, ever hear me rant about a movie, "Oh, that would never happen." To me, the kiss of death for a film is the opposite--to be too mundane, too run of the mill.

I do not want to go into a movie and see people do a bunch of stuff I can do in real life. Save me your brooding. Save me your heartache. Save me your pining. Save me, for crying out loud, your angst. Been there, done that, okay? The only thing I can think of that would be worse than going through that again is watching somebody else go through it.

So when I read a negative review that says, "As unrealistic as it gets," I'm left wondering whether it was the movie that had problems, or if the review just wasn't a genre film watcher.

My wife is one of those non-genre filmgoers. "This could never happen," is a regular beef she has with genre films (or "Daddy Movies," as we call them at our house).

So my plea, my earnest, heart-felt petition, is please, please--if you're not a fan of a genre, don't ever critique films in that genre. Your review will be, at best, unhelpful to real fans of that genre, and more likely, patronizing towards fans of that genre, and they will be forced to conclude you are a two-times-idiot.

One time for not "getting" the genre, and one time for sitting through a movie you knew you weren't going to like.

I swear I will never review an "angst" movie on this blog.

1 comment:

melinama said...

When my daughter was 13 she point-blank refused to go to any of the countless "coming of age" movies pitched to her demographic. "Living it is bad enough," she said, "I don't have to watch it, too."