On August 4 I wrote an article headlined “Is Roger Ebert Still Credible?” The article came out of ads I saw for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in which Roger Ebert gave the film 3/4 stars. I couldn’t believe it. I knew Ebert was taking a much kinder approach to films since returning from his illness, but I never thought I would see him give such a bad film such a good grade.
However, it didn’t take me long to realize anyone can like a movie if said movie hits the right notes for that particular person and for Ebert he said of The Mummy 3, “It was just plain dumb fun, is why. It is absurd and preposterous, and proud of it.” For him, that was enough, and who am I to argue or judge? It also teaches us to read an opinion before judging it simply on the stars/grade.
However, I caught myself baffled again, when Ebert gave The Women 3/4 stars as well. Sorry, but this is getting to be a bit insane. He also gave Burn after Reading three stars as well as Hancock and Hamlet 2. If Ebert wasn’t such an icon of film criticism this wouldn’t even be a point of interest. However, he is, and even he realizes people have been keying in on his overwhelming response to so many films deemed mediocre to awful by the majority of film critics.
In a new blog post headlined “You give out too many stars” Ebert tackles the criticism head on:
[As] some readers have observed, did I seem to grade lower in my first 10 or 15 years on the job? I know the answer to that one. When I started, I considered 2.5 stars to be a perfectly acceptable rating for a film I rather liked in certain aspects. Then I started doing the TV show, and ran into another wacky rating system, the binary thumbs. Up or down, which is it?
Gene Siskel boiled it down: “What’s the first thing people ask you? Should I see this movie? They don’t want a speech on the director’s career. Thumbs up–yes. Thumbs down–no.” That made sense, but in the paper it had the effect of nudging a lot of films from 2.5 to three stars. There is never any doubt about giving four stars, or one star. The problem comes with the movies in the middle. Siskel once tried to get away with giving thumbs up to a 2.5 star movie, but I called him on it.
I can totally agree with him on the whole 2.5 star thing and the difficulty in my case of giving a film anything from a C- to a B-. So much of online film criticism is judged by whether a film makes the grade at such critic wrangling websites as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes that you begin to wonder just where exactly your opinion would fit in. Personally I don’t post my reviews on Rotten Tomatoes even though I have the Rotten Tomatoes rankings circulating on the site for readers to see. This is primarily for the reason that a film given a C+ or below is considered Rotten while a B- and above is Fresh. What kind of logic is that?
In grade school a “C” represents an average student, a concept lost on society nowadays since if you are a C-student something must be wrong with you. Unfortunately the “B” seems to have somehow become the new average, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room at the top of the scale. One of the problems I have with Ebert’s scale (and he obviously seems to have the same viewpoint) is that four stars just don’t cut it. While a two star review would mean average it looks like you are saying 50% and that ain’t good. However, a 2.5 star review is basically equivalent to a B- which is a rather large jump if you ask me.
Ebert, however, is a critic I look up to and he has taken what basically equates to a “hell with Metacritic” attitude saying, “I must certainly never lower it from three to 2.5 so I can look better on the Metacritic scale.”
What’s his reason for the higher grades as of late?
I like movies too much. I walk into the theater not in an adversarial attitude, but with hope and optimism (except for some movies, of course). I know that to get a movie made is a small miracle, that the reputations, careers and finances of the participants are on the line, and that hardly anybody sets out to make a bad movie.
This is where I mildly disagree with him. Of course I never go into a film wanting to dislike it. That would mean I go to a theater with the goal of being miserable for the next two hours and if that is ever the case you can pretty much stand by for my obituary to be written fairly soon because I will be chewing on the barrel of a gun if that is ever the case. However, I don’t ever take into consideration what it must have taken for the film to get made or the careers of the individuals involved. Obviously my opinion matters as much as a fly fart in heavy wind when compared to Ebert’s, but if I was Ebert I would also never let such things affect my opinion. The fact that The Mummy 3 was bad doesn’t improve just because I think Brendan Fraser is a good guy and I hate to see how Rob Cohen has struggled to make a good movie in the last six years (yeah, I sorta liked xXx).
Inside Ebert’s blog post he mentions the critical scale you see above as employed by the San Francisco Chronicle and at the end of his post he gets Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle to explain the Little Man and you can almost feel the jealousy he gets out of the man in the middle there. The Little Man that absorbs all the C- to B- films in one lump sum. No more worrying about 2 star reviews, 2.5 star reviews and perhaps the occasional 3 star review you don’t want to call a 2.5 star. Personally I don’t like it because I have become quite fond of my adoption of the “C = average” rule and think the lumping ease of Little Man #3 is a bit of a cheat.
The “C-rule” works. So many films basically sit on that average line. Sometimes a little more (C+) and sometimes a little less (C-). Once you become comfortable with the idea it really does make things quite simple.
Of course, there is one final detail necessary when reviewing movies. The idea that you don’t give a damn what people think.
Most often in the online world if someone disagrees with your opinion you will get the, “You’re stupid and don’t know anything. This movie is the best ever!” comment. These I call, “Comments I don’t care about.” Ebert puts it this way:
If you disagree with how many stars I gave it, you can mail your opinion to where the sun don’t shine.
Good thing he liked The Dark Knight eh? There would have been a lot of proctologists busy removing postal letters from fanboys’ “sun don’t shine.”
Cancer may have taken his ability to speak, but Ebert still packs a punch with his words. The complete post is an eye-opener and I love the fact Roger is blogging now because I have yet to read one of his posts that hasn’t interested me. You can read this complete post right here and while you are at it you may want to read his opinion on 3-D right here.
