Is a critics job to focus on the creative/technical side of movies or see if its enjoyable?

[hasanahmad]

Discuss?

[CoolioD1]

Both?

[Lordmandeep]

Both but for certain films they usually let things slide if it was enjoyable...

 

Good example is Fast Five. 

[lab276]

Both.

[hasanahmad]

Both but for certain films they usually let things slide if it was enjoyable... Good example is Fast Five.

Thats what i was thinking of. If looking technically its an atrocious while entertaining movie

[Ozymandias]

Both, but every now and then the critics will wander off the reservation in either direction. Sometimes they'll award movies like Fast Five with good reviews(deservedly so) because of their wild enjoyability despite being shit for brains. 

 

In other cases, critics will almost completely ignore enjoyability and focus on the "technical/creative" side of a film.  Usually when this happens, the critics think as "critics" that they are supposed love it and that they are smarter than most people when in reality they aren't.  A perfect example of this would be The Tree of Life.  Aside from 1 stunning sequence in that film(that ironically feels way out of place), the rest of it is a tedious chore to sit through, somewhere between watching paint dry and sticking your penis in a meat grinder.

[Jack Nevada]

A decent critic knows how to combine both into a good review.

[4815162342]

Is a critics job to focus on the creative/technical side of movies or see if its enjoyable?

Yes

[Jake Gittes]

Both, but every now and then the critics will wander off the reservation in either direction. Sometimes they'll award movies like Fast Five with good reviews(deservedly so) because of their wild enjoyability despite being shit for brains. 

 

In other cases, critics will almost completely ignore enjoyability and focus on the "technical/creative" side of a film.  Usually when this happens, the critics think as "critics" that they are supposed love it and that they are smarter than most people when in reality they aren't.  A perfect example of this would be The Tree of Life.  Aside from 1 stunning sequence in that film(that ironically feels way out of place), the rest of it is a tedious chore to sit through, somewhere between watching paint dry and sticking your penis in a meat grinder.

Just because you or me didn't find TTOL enjoyable doesn't mean it was supposed to be the same for everyone else. I personally know a few people, who aren't even film critics, who got a lot out of that film, and the idea that they only said as much in order to look more intelligent is ridiculous to me. I can definitely believe there were some critics who did that, but in general the percentage of those who only praise or bash certain movies because they feel they're supposed to seems wildly overestimated to me. Perhaps being a critic myself for the past two years made me more biased, because I'd never hide my true opinion, no matter how unpopular, and I don't know anyone else who would. When I got to review The Master, I could have easily praised it to high heavens and not been taken to task by anyone, but I knew I had mixed feelings on it and I expressed them. I could have easily ridiculed To the Wonder, but to my own surprise, I found quite a bit to appreciate in it, and so I wrote a positive review. I don't know, it honestly just seems like such a no-brainer to me, I have a hard time imagining how it wouldn't for many other people. 

[Darth Homer]

Usually both, though occasionally critics will rally behind a guilty pleasure (i.e. Piranha 3D). The thing that people forget when they complain "oh critics don't like fun movies! how can they trash Transformers? blah, blah, blah," is that critics aren't that hard to please. They usually enjoy a well-made, shallow blockbuster as much as general audiences. They just aren't as likely to dismiss glaringly stupid flaws and cynical manipulation of the audience. There's world of difference between a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, even though they follow the same basic formula. Good critics judge a movie on its own terms and how successful it is compared to other movies in the same genre. The days of "it's not Citizen Kane so it sucks" critics are thankfully behind us.

[luna]

critics are usually pretty easy going on movies, so i'd say they do both for the most part

[Cmasterclay]

Depends on the type of reviewer. If you're writing for a film blog or a smaller critical website, it should be more of an examination of the technical aspects. But if you're writing for a popular website like Yahoo or a newspaper? It should be all about entertainment. People read newspaper and website reviews like that to know if they'll enjoy the movie. So they should tell us if it's enjoyable or not.