My Problem with Movie Critics

I am going to admit an intense interest in the new movie “The Passion of the Christ” and because of this I have been interested in reading and listening to movie critics talk about the movie and the inplications of the movie. Now…I always take everything critics say with a grain of salt…mostly because they never seem to like the same movies I like.

I am going to start right off by saying I have not seen The Passion yet and I will make my mind up about it when and if I see it. But the other morning I was listening to two movie critics discuss The Passion on some morning show. Unfortunately I don’t remember which show or which critics I was watching.

One critic’s review I enjoyed…he kept talking about the actor’s abilities, the cinematography, the content of the movie. He talked about all the aspects of the movie that an intelligent person would talk about. This critic’s review of the movie was very good and he backed up his reasons well with actual reasons.

The other critic- he didn’t like the movie…and he has every right not to. But my thought is that if you are going to broadcast your opinions on public television you should at least back the thoughts up. First of all, he couldn’t get passed the violence of the movie…and that the violence was uncalled for. I don’t know about you, and I don’t mean to open up a religious discussion here…but crucifixion isn’t not…at least not in my mind. The newscaster kept asking him about specifics, but he would just say, and he repeated this over and over, that Mel Gibson is all about violence and the film has absolutely no merit because of it. That was the basis of his argument. The newscaster asked him specifically about the actor and he goes said something to the effect of “Well…he doesn’t have to act…just suffer…because it is all about violence..” Long story short, It had to be the most idiotic movie review I have heard in a long long time, because it wasn’t really a movie review but a bashing of a movie over and over again because it contained one element they didn’t like so they shut their mind off to the other aspects of the film and go on and on about one aspect.