Movie reviews, much like ZIP drives, could have been good but aren't. Like most of the things in the world that were once good (e.g. the internet, Communism, music, the Star Wars series), movie reviews were ruined by fat, aging, balding white men. Normally this means marketing people (or in the case of Communism, Gorbachev). However, in the world of movie reviews, I'm talking about Roger Ebert. And before you detail-munching squirrels jump on me and try to eat my eyes out (thanks to you guys I have a fear of squirrels now), yes, he is in fact balding. We all know that his hair grew on a tree.
The thing about movie reviews, though, is that for some reason, people seem to care about them. Rather than relying on a trailer or a friend to tell them if a movie is good, they go straight to the Master of Deception himself, to see what he thought of it. After all, he's famous, he must be right. And at this point, all logic breaks down, because everybody seems to forget everything that fat old balding white men (marketers this time) have taught them, because if they didn't then they would realize that Ebert's opinion is only representative of the 40-300 year old trans-euratic (they like to use words like that instead of just saying "white") male demographic, which, although a large market, is not indicative of the state of the opinions of the entire populace. Then they would bust out the pie charts and that's when things just get crazy. Or, if they happen to be Roger Ebert, they just bust out the pie instead, and work on becoming more fat, smug, and worthless.
That's the biggest problem with most movie reviews: the reviewer thinks that his opinion matters to you, and is so self-righteous as to think that his word will always and forever mandate whether or not anybody sees the movie. I don't know about you, but I'd rather stick a skewer through my head and grill myself into the world's largest brain-kabob than let somebody else make my decisions for me. Movie critics don't realize that, though, because they seem to think that everybody should feel the same way that they do, and that just because they didn't enjoy a movie, nobody else should either. For example, I'm sure that there are quite a few people who enjoyed the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious. This is because not everybody thinks the same way. However, all of the people who enjoyed that movie should be shot.
Another problem with most movie reviews is that they try to analyze symbolism. Symbolism is essentially a tool used by literature teachers to torture students. Symbolism is literature's corollary to the thumbscrew. There is a fine line between allegory and symbolism, and that line is marked "B.S." So in case you're a movie critic and your innards are wrought with turmoil at the depth of the symbolism that you have borne witness to, I would like to remind you that nobody cares, and that unless your analysis of symbolism is hilarious like some movie reviews, to leave it out of your worthless expenditure of calories passed off as some kind of worthwhile editorial. The only people that would possibly care would be poets, but I'm already planning to have all of them killed anyway. The trick is that I can't just have them executed, because then they're allowed last words, and they'll probably say something poetic or faux-symbolic and even though nobody will care, literature teachers somewhere will probably make their brainless minions analyze it.
Stabs at symbolism aren't enough, though. Critics are also fickle. Fickle is another word for "hypocrites." They will write a scathing review of a movie only to retract their stance as soon as they find out that the general public absolutely loved the movie. So it turns out that their opinions are so void and worthless that they're willing to abandon them if somebody else enjoys something that they didn't. Thus, movie critics don't even know if they like a movie or not, they just take a guess at it and sell it to somebody. Then they wait to see what the public thinks, and agree with them. So if the critic is trying his hardest to write down your opinion on a movie, why do you bother to read his opinion before you go see the movie? If you disagree, he'll change it anyway.
If you're not already thoroughly convinced that movie critics are worthless, though, just look at the other things they put out. For example, their "top 100 movies of ALL TIME" or however they try to market it. The top half will be littered with such archaic tranquilizers as Casablanca or Citizen Kane. If we reviewed movie reviews the way critics review movies, we'd quickly dismiss them as "an aging, bitter man, clinging desperately to the memories of his younger years, oblivious to the fact that the world is moving on without him." So if you are a person that cares about what movie critics think, then you are stupid. You probably also care what music critics think, and let Rolling Stone or the top 40 station tell you what to buy. Since you pay attention to those, you're obviously too blind and helpless to pull yourself out of this cycle of crappiness that you've gotten yourself into, so just kill yourself (if I haven't beat you to it).
