WebVideo A Reviewer Who Isn't That Good
I've seen this guy's videos treated as the gospel by his fans, saying that everyone should follow his standards. Honestly, is it really that impressive when Mau Ler only seems to criticize low hanging fruit?
People tout him as some sort of genius because he criticizes bottom of the barrel content like Go T S8 or The Predator 2018. However, when he's forced to find flaws in good material, like Avatar: The Last Airbender, he fumbles. Remember that he gave the show a 4/10 and comes up with bizarre arguments (Why doesn't Aang use the Avatar State everytime) or literally forgets what happens in the narrative (saying things like how could the Dai Li brainwash the entire population of Ba Sing Se even though the show never said that) and treats it like a flaw. He was so confident that ATLA is a bad show that he debated a guy who couldn't come up with proper counters because he hasn't seen the show for nearly a decade. Totally didn't do this because he was scared of getting BTFO'd.
And in regards to his standards. Yeah, I also value consistency but Mau Ler really loves to focus on irrelevant minutiae. A good portion of his TFA review is spent on the lights in the FO transport ship, even though it has no bearing on the story.
I've also find that his standards has lead several of his friends, like Wolf and Fringy, to dislike content they used to like. Even Wolf has admitted that he doesn't like to watch his favorite media with Mau Ler because there's a high chance that the latter would ruin it for him. Fringy has even went back on his love for Bojack Horseman after watching it with Mau Ler.
Also, Mau Ler doesn't apply his standards consistently, whether he's aware of it or not. If we take his stance on coincidences in storytelling, he'll give A New Hope or Fellowship of the Ring a pass but will criticize ATLA for using the same trope.
Mau Ler's style inadvertently created several copy cats, like Southpaw, that magnify his problems and become insanely contrarian. Which comes hilarious because when the standards is used on a show they like (in Southpaw's case, Terriers), they get extremely mad and disavow Mau Ler's standards.
Lastly, his main channel is practically a ghost town. Other than his parody videos (which you can hardly call his since they're mostly compilations of sentences made by other people), content is pretty sparse. His TFA series basically came to a screeching halt. Part 3 came out almost two years ago and there's no word on part 4. Not to mention he hasn't finished his Go T videos and supposedly had a The Boys, T Ro S, The Joker and Last of Us 2 critique on the way but those are dead in the water. It might seem harsh but EFAP has honestly destroyed his channel. Why put out edited videos when people will throw money at you making low effort streams?
WebVideo Mauler the Trawler
I wouldn't normally take the time to review another reviewer, especially one I didn't particularly like. But as I've ended up having to spend far more time going through Mauler's output than I would have ever wanted, I figure I might as well make the most of the time wasted by encouraging other people to avoid his work.
At first impressions, Mauler's videos are decently edited, and he speaks through his points clearly and precisely. Beyond that, the main thing anyone notices about Mauler's critiques is that they are extremely long, sometimes far in excess of the movies themselves. Longform criticism is fine as long as it justifies taking up so much of your time. Mauler fails to do this, exhaustively exploring movies in chronological order to highlight any perceived fault as they come, no matter how petty. Other longform reviewers summarise the main issues, or find ways to order their opinions so as to stick to the point. With Mauler, no nit escapes picking.
Worse than that, his hyper scrutiny isn't even particularly accurate or consistent. On several occasions, I'd caught out Mauler complaining about some pathetically small fault in a movie that turned out to be either adequately explained within the film, or consistent with that broader movie franchise. If I'm going to waste 10 minutes of my life listening to some guy complain about Star Wars gun turrets, they could at least do me the decency to not fudge the details so as to make their point. But Mauler has to find things to complain about so he will resort to convenient omissions and deception.
Mauler does this is because he is far from objective (a term he loves to use on himself). There are biases in his review style and in the choice of movie to complain about. Rather than acknowledge these biases, Mauler denies having them at all. Mauler is also dismissive of frequent accusations of being an alt-righter and a sexist. He doesn't do a very good job of dissuading us, hanging around with openly "anti-SJW" critics so that they can waste hours of our time tearing down women lead movies and content creators. Mauler avoids sexist language in his main scripted critiques, but in his extemporaneous discussions the mask slips. In one such rant he repeatedly calls actor Kelly Marie Tran "Shrek", for having the audacity to not be hot enough for him. Mauler's defenders would argue that he goes after a number of targets, not just women. At best this simply means he has bad opinions on an eclectic range of subjects, whilst still also being a sexist.
The final complaint is about his fans. If you criticise Mauler then a fan will miraculously appear, often imploring you to watch his opinions in full. If you don't, they call that a justification to dismiss your opinion. Hence why I've had to waste time giving Mauler the benefit of the doubt, watching ever more of his content in the vain attempt to prove myself wrong.
It hasn't happened so far, but maybe I'm just biased.