With the recent cavalcade of formulaic sequels, Hollywood has all but abandoned its imagination and creativity. And critics have hilariously taken notice.
Consider, for example, Michael Bay’s latest cinematic embarrassment, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which was released on June 24.
Movie reviewers enjoyed themselves, almost too much, sharpening their rhetorical flourish in coming up with the most hyperbolically insulting comments possible.
Here are a few examples. Tom Long of Detroit News said, “A great grinding garbage disposal of a movie.”
Robert Wilonsky of Village Voice said, “[A] bewildering, noisy, sloppy, cynical piece of work.” And my personal favorite, from Peter Travers of Rolling Stone: “[It] carves out its own category of godawfulness.”
And if these vitriolic statements were designed to dissuade audiences from watching the movie, they couldn’t have been more unsuccessful.
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” became an astounding success. It broke box office records for the largest amount of money grossed for an opening night during the week.
One could argue that audiences ignored the critics because they were attracted to the movie’s awesome explosions, childhood nostalgia and mildly attractive actors.
But audiences were attracted to “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” which doesn’t have special effects, isn’t reminiscent of one’s youth and features comedic anti-hunk Kevin James.
Roger Ebert received an outpouring of mail from disgruntled fans after writing that instead of seeing “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” people should just “cue up a male choir singing the music of hell […] and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together.”
Instead of rationally agreeing to disagree, Ebert cracked his knuckles and whipped out the barbed invectives, calling the fans “nine blooms short of a bouquet” and “not sufficiently evolved.” Take that, simian fanboys!
Ebert’s relentless insult mongering demonstrates the catharsis that entertainment reviewers undergo after being forced to watch something indescribably bad.
And their catharsis is our entertainment.
Times Online recently published an article called, “Amazon hijacked: 10 funniest review threads,” where it features samples of reviews cynically mocking really bad products.
One such product, “Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz,” is literally a gallon of milk, offered by overenthusiastic sellers for as much as $2,500. And reviewers pounced on the opportunity to provide hilarious feedback on an obviously ridiculous product.
One reviewer wrote a rhyming milk-themed imitation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” Another gushes, “Sometimes we just need a sign — for me, this was Tuscan Whole Milk.”
There’s an entire subculture of funny Amazon.com reviews for products too ridiculous to take seriously. And these reviews are really just anonymous and gratuitous versions of those entertainment reviews, trying to pump a little excitement to something conspicuously devoid of it.
So while Hollywood continues churning out inevitable disasters such as “Big Momma’s House 3” and “Wild Hogs 2,” I will turn immediately to their reviews. At least they’ll be entertaining.
Send hilarious reviews of this column to david.k.edwards.1@asu.edu.
