Have film critics lost touch?

The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie opened last week to rather poor critical reviews, and currently holds a “33% Rotten” rating on RottenTomatoes.com.  You would not necessarily be able to tell the movie was so poor based on its $90,000,000 opening weekend.  Ordinary people do not go see a Pirates of the Caribbean movie because they are expecting to see an Oscar contender, they go to watch Johnny Depp walk around in a dreadlock wig for two hours and generally act like a hilarious, drunken, smart ass pirate.

Constantly there are movies released that most of us find vastly entertaining or hilarious, but a well cultured film critic will assign it with a mediocre or poor rating.  I am sure that many people picture film critics sitting around, drinking expensive lattes, and getting paid to say movies suck.  This is where I feel that professional film critics have lost touch with the general public, and I believe others share the same opinion.  The critics seem to forget that not every film is intending to be a contender at Cannes.

Film is definitely an art form, of that there is no doubt, and most assuredly the education professional critics receive on film is focused heavily on the artistic side.  I think that this is where the disconnect begins, because at this point they seem to forget that the intention of the vast majority of movies is simply to entertain the audience, and of course to make a nice profit.  I saw one review complain about “the non-stop barrage of noisy action sequences.”  Really?  Noisy action sequences are a problem in a summer blockbuster?  I had no idea!  I will try to keep this in mind during my reviews.

As stated earlier, not every movie is trying to win a Best Picture award, the film’s intentions are much more grounded.  It is with this idea in mind that I will attempt to set my opinions apart from more professional and technical film critics.  I will focus my reviews on how well a film achieves its intended goals and not just on its technical merits, and of course with as many smart ass comments as I can muster.

Also I will be going to see the new "Pirates" movie later this evening and I will let you all know about how noisy those action sequences really are in my first review.