Lazy movie review writing.

[Buried Alien]

This is CNN's review (http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/02/review.thunder/index.html) for an apparently bad new movie called SOUND OF THUNDER, based on the Ray Bradbury novel of the same name.

The movie might be as bad as the reviewer suggests. I don't know. I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to.

The point is not whether or not the movie was terrible...it's how badly this review was written.

If a movie is truly terrible, then a movie reviewer has the right and privilege (maybe even the professional obligation) to criticize it. I thought this particular reviewer, however, did a terrible job at reviewing the movie because, well, he only makes vague generalizations about the movie which really don't describe what's *wrong* with it. Of all the things he kind of, sort of described, the only things I could identify that would make the movie bad are bad hairpieces (for lead actor Ben Kingsley), cliched plots (but don't forget, it was derived from an existing novel), and bad special effects. There was even a paragraph where the reviewer basically gave up writing because he hated the movie so much.

That's fine for us here just conversing on a TV/Films Forum, but if you're a professional writer writing a movie review for a major news organization, you've got to be more of a professional and actually REVIEW the movie, even if you hate it.

So the movie probably was lousy...but so was the review.


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[Chevan]

Wow. That's... really, really bad. It's not even a review, it's a several paragraph complaint.

The movie does look terrible, though, especially considering that the original short story ended about thirty seconds after they got back from the original trip. The way they stretched it out to full-length movie is almost a disgrace to Bradbury.

[Copper]

Funny thing is I heard the radio adaptation of this story a few times on Mystery Play I-Radio.

[davids]

Comes from the Newsday review of the orginal King Kong.


"Were as a mixed afair doesn't work. Kong suffers, Fay wray screams and Robert armstrong becomes a philospher. Starring, skull island, the third avenue El and the Empire state Building. It's never been topped!"

That is one great Review!

[Buried Alien]

Different month. Different movie. Same reviewer. Same lazy, negative reviewing style. (http://search.cnn.com/pages/search.jsp?query=Ben%20Kingsley)

This guy seems to just get off on complaining about movies. How did CNN.com ever hire him?

EDIT: OK, to be fair, he wasn't so lazy this time. He didn't give up reviewing half way through the article just to rant like he did last time. He actually spent some time fleshing out the reasoning behind his complaints, as well as giving a summary of the movie and what worked and didn't work about it.

Still, the crabby attitude seems gratuitous. For me, reviewers who come into a review with an attitude lose a few points of credibility.

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[Paradox]

The whole "aren't I clever/snark" review that's not a review is common among unpaid online reviewers. It shouldn't be with a paid CNN professional. What, are they letting the interns in on the action? Where's the editor?

[Buried Alien]

The whole "aren't I clever/snark" review that's not a review is common among unpaid online reviewers. It shouldn't be with a paid CNN professional. What, are they letting the interns in on the action? Where's the editor?

Precisely, Dox. For the handsome sum of money I'm sure CNN is paying him, they should demand something better out of this guy than rants that any TV/Film Forum poster could do equally well...for free.

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