...Long Live the Critic
Film studios may try to woo them and bloggers may try to outdo them, but the film critic still has a place in the world, argues Joe Griffin… who also provides a window into a day in the life of a critic.

The lowly film critic: simultaneously one of the best and worst jobs a sentient fan of cinema could ask for. Yes, you get to watch films for a living, but at the same time, you have to watch films. In the same way that a prostitute is obliged to never turn away a client, the moral onus is on the film critic to sit through the entirety of, say, Big Momma’s House 2.

Them and us
Here’s a question: is there a disparity between filmgoers’ tastes and those of a film critic? Does it matter if there is? And if not, why do we have them? Every now and then accusations surface that film critics are out of touch with public taste (which is frequently the case); that they are pretentious, failed filmmakers themselves (again, often true); and, worst of all, that they are unnecessary in today’s cultural climate (balderdash!). These damning claims appear to have validity at first glance, and anecdotes like the following would seem to support them:

1. Roger Ebert, simultaneously the most well-known film critic in America and one of the most respected, told a story of meeting a fan on the street. The fan asked Mr Ebert to recommend a film, Mr Ebert said that ‘film x’ was the most acclaimed film of the year so far. The fan said (apparently without a trace of irony) that that didn’t sound like the sort of thing he’d like to see.

2. The disparity between ‘favourite film’ lists voted by the public and by critics: On Sky News, there was a discussion on the difference between two such lists. The public voted for Star Wars as the best film ever, while the latest in an interminable list of critics polls was topped by The Godfather Part II. A texter voted into the newsroom questioning the validity of critics, and asking why anyone would neglect something as entertaining as Star Wars over ‘some film with a message’.

3. Norbit, or rather, films like it. Norbit, as its director Brian Robbins was at pains to point out publicly, was one of the least critically-acclaimed but most financially successful films worldwide of the past year.

There is a small but growing consensus that film critics have outlived their usefulness, that they are woefully out of touch with the taste of the common man, and that the merest scratch beneath the surface will verify this. So let’s scratch…

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 118.