Movie reviews, blurbs amount to little more than bad advice

Rules to live by: floss daily, leave the toilet seat down, spin
around in your chair three times before you salt chicken, knock on
your car window when you’re passing through a yellow light
and/or passing a car with one headlight, and of course, yell
“Run, Forrest, run” when you see somebody running.

With a set of rules like that, I can live the rest of my life
without any worries whatsoever. But I did forget to mention the
most important rule that must never, ever, ever be forgotten.

Never rely on blurbs for deciding whether or not to watch
movies.

How many times have you heard “The funniest movie of the
year”? Or something about “Edge of your seat
excitement!” or some kind of “Thrill ride!” But
how often have you looked at the source of the reviews
themselves?

Let’s get something straight. The Pacoima Times
isn’t a credible source of information. The Solvang Tribune
is not the first publication we should go running to to see if a
film is worth watching. And contrary to popular belief, the
Bellflower Journal, Monrovia Daily, and Rowland Heights Herald
aren’t worthy publications either. (For those of you who
don’t know, Rowland Heights is a small unincorporated
district in California located approximately where the 60 and 57
freeway meet ““ I’m from there).

But back to my point. When completely random periodicals make
such bold statements, the truth is, the movie was so crappy that
the studio needed to rely on some lame reporter that it wined and
dined in order to get a good quote. They the advertisers plaster
said quote on their movie poster so they can make back all the
money they dumped into the stupid project.

Do I sound bitter? Oh yeah, like you won’t believe. I
guess that’s what happens when you’ve been a film and
television editor for a year and you’re completely used to
publicists pushing a really crappy movie and trying to get you to
every showing of their movie so they can use your review for a
blurb. Bah.

And you know what the worst part is? Oftentimes these blurbs are
taken totally out of context. Sometimes the blurb will read
something along the lines of “The movie was great!” but
in actuality, the second part of the sentence says “if I
really liked crappy movies!” was omitted. Or sometimes
it’ll be something like “I’m going to see it
again!” but they forgot to mention that the next part of the
sentence said “if I have to choose between watching this or
gouging out my eyes with rusty scalpels” (notice the
“Oedipus Rex” allusion).

People say “two thumbs up,” but I don’t think
a thumb is a good unit of measurement. I guess people are referring
to “thumbs up” as being a good thing, but what about
the A-okay sign? Might as well give a movie two A-okays or maybe
two high-fives or chest bumps for the sports fans who like movies.
Besides, the thumb is one of my least favorite evolution-engineered
digits. What about prehensile tails? Two prehensile tails up!

Or sometimes movie critics will rate the movie with stars, but
they never say how many stars it’s out of! I get so flustered
when people give a movie four stars, but I’m constantly
wondering what fraction of stars that is worth. If the total is
four, that’s super. But think about it; there are like
centillions (1.00 * 10^60, for all the math folks) of stars in the
universe, so what if it’s four stars out of all existing
stars? That would be a horrible movie.

Movie critics are inconsistent, blurbs are unreliable at best,
and thumbs are better for biting (Shakespeare, too? Wow, I’m
on fire). I think I’m just going to rely on my friends for
movie reviews. If they tell me a movie is really good or funny
maybe I’ll check it out, or if they give it two prehensile
tails, then that would be cool too.