Critics' fear to rate silly movies highly

[Scully1888]

Now, I'm not saying this always happens but I've noticed it very recently with the UK release of Team America.

Every review I've read says it's very silly and extremely funny, yet it always seem to get a middling mark of around 3/5. Indeed I've only seen one 5/5 as of yet.

On the Thursday before the film came out I listened to a film reviewer on BBC Radio 5 Live talking about the films coming out the next day. One of them was Team America. He talked about how he thought the filmwas absolutely hilarious and how he had tears streaming down his face at one point. He also reviewed Closer and said it was a great film.

At the end of his segment, the female presenter asked him to give marks for the two films. He gave Closer 9/10 and said it was a great film.

Then he was asked his score for Team America. He said "I'll give it 6/10, but it was really funny. I laughed all the way through it."

Now, my question is this: why give a film a low mark when it does what's asked of it? Why give another film a higher mark because it's a 'serious' film, a possible Oscar contender? At the end of the day Closer, being a drama, sets out to be a serious, powerful film and it succeeds. So it gets a high mark. Team America, being a comedy, sets out to make people laugh throughout and (in my opinion and the aforementioned reviewer's) it succeeds. Why can't it get high marks?

MEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH it makes me mad. :mad:

[Ted Pikul]

Genre movies (generally) never get the love they deserve from critics.

Conversely they are the most loved films by the general viewing public which is a far higher accolade I'd say.

[jaw2929]

Movies don't make money based on what the critics rate them... They make money based on what the general populace likes to watch.... So I would agree with above said statement ;)

[Briare Rabbit]

Because most critics recognize dramas and such as better made, of high quality and such. If a comedy comes out and is intelligent, well thought out and well made, then it will most likely get higher marks, like last summer's Anchorman got surprisingly good reviews, most reviewers tend to recognize that funny doesn't always equel good.

[kungfuchris]

Originally posted by Briare Rabbit
Because most critics recognize dramas and such as better made, of high quality and such. If a comedy comes out and is intelligent, well thought out and well made, then it will most likely get higher marks, like last summer's Anchorman got surprisingly good reviews, most reviewers tend to recognize that funny doesn't always equel good.

How is the drama genre intrinsically 'better made' as compared to comedy?

The purpose of comedy is to make someone laugh, as such if it is funny it is good.

[Briare Rabbit]

Originally posted by kungfuchris
How is the drama genre intrinsically 'better made' as compared to comedy?

The purpose of comedy is to make someone laugh, as such if it is funny it is good.

No, that is not always the case. In fact, rarely it is.

Dodgeball made me laugh, I would not rate it high, I would not rank it high. The acting is quite terrible and the jokes are obvious, but I laughed. Did it succeed as a film? No. It didnt. Did it make me laugh? Yes. Did I pass it? Yes.

And something's purpose doesn't make it good. At all.

[kungfuchris]

Originally posted by Briare Rabbit
No, that is not always the case. In fact, rarely it is.

Dodgeball made me laugh, I would not rate it high, I would not rank it high. The acting is quite terrible and the jokes are obvious, but I laughed. Did it succeed as a film? No. It didnt. Did it make me laugh? Yes. Did I pass it? Yes.

And something's purpose doesn't make it good. At all.

Umm if the the jokes made you laugh then it suceeded as a film since that is what it set out to do. Unless you equate sucess with technical achievement (editing and camerawork and so on).

For comedies this kind of stuff is peripheral to the main point.

In a drama good acting is necessary for it to achieve it's purpose, draw you into the story and make you connect to the characters.

So I still do not understand your initial statement that critics understand that dramas are of a higher quality then comedies simply because they are drama.

[movieguy1021]

It all depends on the material around the comedy.

Airplane! is the funniest movie ever made. A movie needs to have some semblence of a plot for it to work.

Now, I'm one of the few people who actually liked Soul Plane. It was similar to Airplane!, except in one regard. When Airplane! had its exposition, it was still funny ("I can't tell you that. It's classified."). It was also completely tongue-in-cheek. But when Soul Plane's exposition came along, it was disgustingly sappy.

Therefore,
Airplane! 10/10
Soul Plane 8/10

Most critics wouldn't give either that high, because they're not serious movies.

[Scully1888]

Originally posted by movieguy1021
Airplane is the funniest movie ever made. A movie needs to have some semblence of a plot for it to work. Surely Airplane! didn't have THAT much of a plot?

The plane takes off, the plane breaks down, an ex-war pilot lands it. :)

[Ted Pikul]

I don't know I enjoyed the character arc of Lloyd Bridges' air traffic controller. ;)

[Misanthrope]

Well the way i see it, if they were good they wouldnt be silly, just funny and innocent

[Scully1888]

Originally posted by Misanthrope
Well the way i see it, if they were good they wouldnt be silly, just funny and innocent But surely if it aims to be silly and is in fact silly, it's achieved its goal and is therefore good.

[William Munny]

Originally posted by Scully1888
But surely if it aims to be silly and is in fact silly, it's achieved its goal and is therefore good.

I agree 100% on this one (although I have no desire to see "Team America"). An odd exception to the rule you talked about was the "Harold and Kumar" film, which seemed to get praise all around the board (most 3/4 stars). That one didn't seem high-brow to me, but go figure.

[TheDeadWalk]

Film critics usually look at things as a whole. They are not genre critics. They do look at things like cinematography, editing, score, originality, acting, and the like.

I understand Team America is like a retarded cousin to modern filmmaking, but it is still a film nonetheless, and was judged equally. I can get excited through all the action scenes in an overall poorly done action film like the Punisher.

I can laugh my balls off at Tom Green sitting on a fence with his pants down around his ankles for two hours going: "POOPY POOPY POOPY! POOP POOP POOP! HERE COMES THE POOP! ONTO MY NEIGHBOR'S LAWN. POOP POOP POOP. HE LOVES POOP." But no matter how much I laugh at that, it is nowhere near being an excellent film.

[movieguy1021]

Originally posted by Scully1888
Surely Airplane! didn't have THAT much of a plot?

The plane takes off, the plane breaks down, an ex-war pilot lands it. :)

It had a little, with the Peace Corps and all.

And don't call me Shirley.

[thedudeman69]

If a comedy makes me laugh, long and hard, I give it a high rating.

[eurydice]

I just wanted to add that comedy-I mean really good comedy-is hard to write and to act. It's the same with horror. (Not that drama isn't-it's just different) If it's effective for you-that's what counts. All art-including film, is subjective. If a comedy or horror actually gets critical acclaim-it has hopefully achieved more than fart jokes or scantily clothed women screaming. It has a plot, characters you can feel something for, good direction, etc. In the case of horror-a slow increase in the amount of dread you feel, with a satisfying climax-as opposed to making you jump a few times and really crappy special effects.

[combat_rock81]

I totally agree with this. I know that many critics see what they do as some type of art form or some other BS, but when John Q. Public reads or listens to movie reviews, he's trying to find out which movies to spend his hard earned money on, and his main criteria is how much he'll enjoy the movie regardless of how "well made" it is. So I think that if the critic in the initial post genuinely enjoyed Team America as much as Closer, they should have gotten the same score, especially since someone looking merely at the scores would have said, "hmm, Team America is mediocre at best, I'll go see Closer" when they may have enjoyed Team America just as much if not more than Closer.

[The Postmaster General]

Originally posted by kungfuchris
Umm if the the jokes made you laugh then it suceeded as a film since that is what it set out to do. Unless you equate sucess with technical achievement (editing and camerawork and so on).

For comedies this kind of stuff is peripheral to the main point.


I just disagree here -

Wes Anderson makes comedies (IMO) that I think joke and story-wise could be compared to something like "I'll Be Home For Christmas" or a Leslie Neilson movie, but you can't tell me in a million years that I think Eurotrip was as good as The Life Aquatic because both succeeded in their attempt to make me laugh using sight gags, sarcasm, strange situations and odd, off-beat characters.

Yes, this is all subjective, maybe you like Eurotrip beter, but the point is that there are elements other than just "it made me laugh" that make a movie decent.

If that's not the case, these movie discussion boards would be pretty boring. Whether or not a movie is good bases on subjectivity, but dear lord, don't tell me that it all boils down to whether the film made me emote something like laughing.Good grief, movies like Half-Baked, Homegrown, Harold and Kumar -- those movies really get their message across to me, and I just think they are great, but, you know, I wouldn't recommend them that strongly. Maybe the person hearing me wouldn't dig them as much as I do. The same goes with comedy.

[combat_rock81]

Well, I think that with comedies, you have to look at how funny you found it in degrees. Now, there were times in Eurotrip where I laughed, but it wasn't the freakin' laugh riot that his critic made Team America out to be before dishing out the mediocre score.

I think that dramas could be judged by the same criteria, but since the emotional response to scenes in a drama it's a bit more dificult. However, I'd put it like this: Almost every drama I've seen has managed to get me at least somewhat interested in what's happening in the story at least for a few scenes. But that doesn't mean they've all succeded in being "good".

[The Postmaster General]

Originally posted by combat_rock81
Now, there were times in Eurotrip where I laughed, but it wasn't the freakin' laugh riot that his critic made Team America out to be before dishing out the mediocre score.


Haha. Well put.

I don't know how the overall review went, but maybe they were just a bad reviewer.

Check out Joblo's review of GUESS WHO if you haven't already. He talks a bit about this sort of thing. It's pretty cool. I like the way he put it.

[eurydice]

"I totally agree with this. I know that many critics see what they do as some type of art form or some other BS, but when John Q. Public reads or listens to movie reviews, he's trying to find out which movies to spend his hard earned money on, and his main criteria is how much he'll enjoy the movie regardless of how "well made" it is. So I think that if the critic in the initial post genuinely enjoyed Team America as much as Closer, they should have gotten the same score, especially since someone looking merely at the scores would have said, "hmm, Team America is mediocre at best, I'll go see Closer" when they may have enjoyed Team America just as much if not more than Closer."

Good point.
I think the answer to the question "Why do critics fear to rate silly movies highly?" may be this: If they work for a large newspaper, magazine, or other media outlet then they have a boss to contend with. Large newspapers, etc like to be taken seriously. If they give what we are referring here to as silly movies, the same rating as a serious drama and do this consistently-they may lose their job. They may agree with you and want to give these movies high ratings-but maybe their boss doesn't. Being a horror fan, I don't let critics reviews stop me. And that is another reason to be grateful that JoBlo exists.

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by Scully1888
But surely if it aims to be silly and is in fact silly, it's achieved its goal and is therefore good.

Is it really that hard to be silly? I guess its a case per case thing but generally speaking meeting the goal of being silly does not means the movie is automatically good since is not that hard to do, even blooper videos can be silly.

[Gordon]

You bring up a good point. That's why I only go to www.joblo.com for reviews. It's the only site that isn't afraid to say a film is good because it's funny-even though it's kinda pointless.