Newspaper
Any star rating at all seems irrelevant to John Waters' Pink Flamingos, which exists outside of critical terms, like the weather.
—Roger Ebert, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie! (preface)
Theatre
I don't care a darn about the critics. This is the stuff the public wants.
—Billy McGee, Seven Keys to Baldpate (ironically one of George M. Cohan's better-reviewed plays)
Web Animation
What do you want? It's another new Mario game. 8 levels, a competently-arranged difficulty curve, too many repeated boss fights and a couple new power-ups based on the first thing someone saw as they glanced around the room.
— Zero Punctuation waves the white flag, on Super Mario 3D World review
Web Original
I laughed derisively at this when I was 9. Mind you, remake this on a big budget and put Matt Smith in it and a fair few people would be prepared to call it a masterpiece.
Starship Troopers is such an amazing satire most critics didn't even realize it was one. And when someone can't tell that Psychic Gestapo Doogie Howser isn't serious, they can't even be trusted to watch movies for a living.
Critics hate this sort of thing. I was talking with my co-author on the They Might Be Giants book the other day about the way in which art rock is lacking in academic respect in a large part because it self-analyzes, and in doing so defies critique. The cynical explanation for this is that we hate being made obsolete. The more worked through explanation is that there’s a value to critique being independent of the work, and the self-awareness of art rock and other such self-critiquing forms is a barrier to that.
It's a strange thing, being a fan of something. I never realized just how strange until a few months ago, when my three year old daughter fell bum over teakettle in love with Justin Bieber. It's a deep love, I can tell, complete with the bad dreams and discreet little behavioural changes (like her sudden and horrifically disturbing new habit of flashing our TV whenever his image graces it) that warn me it's going to last a looong time. She loves him and no amount of cajoling on my part or exposure to what I consider 'good' music is going to change the fact that my house is going to be full of the sounds of teenage angst and covered in the posters of said teenager for years to come. My daughter has, for the first time, become a fan of something. One day she'll grow out of it, maybe even deny that it was ever there, but for now she is a fanatic, and my job as her father will be, once she realizes how absurd this Bieber obsession was, to tease her about it forever.
I asked him what his favorite movie was, and being a kid (who usually have a new favorite movie every week) he proudly declared it was Eragon with an expression that said he didn't care if I had twenty years and a hundred-twenty pounds on him, if I started bashing that movie, he was coming across that table for my throat.
This movie sucks. Its nearly three hours of horrible acting, terrible scripting, and some of the worst singing ever in movie musicals. I can’t believe my dad loves this movie. *shakes head*
I give the people what they love, while the critics say I'm evil
Got no time to read reviews while I'm working on the sequel!
Got no time to read reviews while I'm working on the sequel!
"Despite receiving poor reviews, Morbius actually did pretty well in the box office, demonstrating the fact that superhero films continue to hold massive popularity."
—Lessons in Meme Culture, "Why Is Morbius The Best Film Ever?
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"Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a review, it's a bit late, they should have got in touch before we made it."
"People laugh at this every night, which explains why a democracy can never be a success."
— Robert Benchley, capsule review of Abie's Irish Rose in Life (September 14, 1922)
