Cinematical

So what you're saying is it's OK to like Juno again?

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I could not agree more. I'm fine when someone doesn't like a movie I loved (i.e. Juno or Slumdog Millionaire), but get upset when they seem to get angry at me for liking it. I think this fits well under my larger umbrella of thought that film quality is subjective. I know it sounds obvious, but many online commenters seem to miss the boat on it, and it never hurts to reiterate. Very nice post.

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I don't know if you can blame the viewer for having to go into a film that's been talked about to death, and coming out disappointed by sky-high expectations. Sure, it's partly their fault for expecting greatness, but it can't be helped that sometimes friends and critics are so excited at a newfound discovery that, maybe, not getting to experience discovering it for yourself combines with a genuine dislike or indifference to the film, and amplifies it.

It's not a universal effect. Everyone was calling The Dark Knight one of the greatest films ever before its release, and yet for many, it genuinely lived up to those promises. But it's coincidental that Scott Weinberg just brought up Juno in the comment above me, since I was going to use it myself.

I saw Juno in early December, 2007, after acquiring tickets to a free screening when the trailer and Toronto Film Festival buzz intrigued me. And I loved it. For the next few months, I told my friends to see it, and as it grew in popularity during awards season, many did. But then I started to get sick of the movie myself - not because of any elitist "I was there first!" feelings or sense of ownership, but because everyone else wouldn't shut up. They quoted it. They argued its merits with the small contingent of haters more thoroughly than I ever bothered. And then they quoted it some more. And it was all aided by its status as a small film only in select theaters, that people were discovering through word of mouth. When I found someone else who had also seen the movie, the excitement at being able to talk about the movie with someone else probably got mixed up with any and all excitement towards the quality of the film itself, and I saw this cycle of oh-my-God-you-saw-it-too-yay-yay-I-know-it's-amaaaaaazing continue months after my enthusiasm started to stabilize and/or fade. It's not that I suddenly disliked the film, I was just exhausted with it once the film's hype and widespread popularity reached a crescendo with the DVD release. My problem wasn't that so many people liked it, but that their enthusiasm for it made it ubiquitous, and their quotes made it feel as if I saw the film about 20 times. Meanwhile, more and more friends who were late to the party reported being disappointed by the movie compared to how high their expectations were once everyone talked about it.

I hadn't watched it since May 2008, but the other day, I decided to see it again, and it charmed me over once more. Once the hype and the constant buzz had died away, it was still a solid, even great film with an incredibly entertaining, unique style and rhythm that I know everyone else has talked about at length. But for a while there, I felt a backlash towards the film within me, not because it was a clearly awful film, but just because maybe it didn't entirely merit the phenomenon-like status it achieved, and just didn't have the replay value for me to hear about preggo eggos and hamburger phones at least once a day. Having seen it before anyone really knew about it (I sound like an ass now, don't I?), I was able to love it on its own terms without the hype coloring my opinion, and realize during the months of super-hype that I didn't hate the film, the buzz was just coloring my enjoyment of repeated viewing, and I probably shouldn't bother watching it for a while. I could completely identify with everyone who didn't understand just how it become SO universally beloved. If I had seen the movie for the first time amidst the hype, when I felt thoroughly indifferent, and without that first "I love it" screening in December, I probably would have taken that for my genuine reaction as well.

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Taping into the relationship between the artist and audience is fundamental to the form, particularly in as connected a world as we live in today. Any filmmaker - or, perhaps I should qualify; any filmmaker nominated for a Golden Globe is someone who clearly has audience in mind when making a film. As far as how a movie will be remembered in such an on demand society, I'd wager its time and place is more important than the movie itself.

Interesting that condemnation of infectious backlash is taking place not only on a medium engineered for polylateral communication, but is surrounding a film whose story concerns a lad participating in another infectious cultural phenomenon. All three of these elements are based upon memes, dismissing the importance of those is silly, methinks.

In a world where content is pouring at us in all directions, is quoting another blogger or reviewer any different than a critic quoting, say, a philosopher, as Rocchi does from time to time? Not that I have any problem with the later, I love a path like Rocchi's that reaches deep into the gene pool of today's culture for perspective. Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but in this day and age is there really a huge difference between quoting a zen master and DANNYGLOVERSDICKBLOOD?

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I believe that it's fine to account for the general critical opinion during year end lists when one can champion an overlooked film or cut down an overhyped one to size but I agree with Eric in that it's inappropriate to consider other reviews while writing your first one about a film.

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thank you for this. this sort of faux backlash always gets me incensed. emerson's comments about the dark knight were starting to get to me, particularly. it's fine that you don't like it, emerson, but to devote post after post to it's every exact flaw (he pretty much thinks every second of the movie is flawed) is just obnoxiousness of a different stripe. it doesn't help anything and really just amounts to venting your spleen through the internets. ugh.

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Saying something sucks and that it's overhyped...that doesn't imply you based your opinion on others' opinions at all. "Damn, Slumdog blew, and how overhyped WAS that?" is a perfectly reasonable reaction. You can arrive at both conclusions separately. Sounds like someone's sensitive about Slumdog criticism at all, lip service to the contrary or not.

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The "American Beauty" backlash over the years has been rather puzzling. Jim Emerson's comments about "The Dark Knight" are mirrored by his 2007 surgical assaults on the integrity of "Their Will Be Blood", as if it were impossible to like both that film and "No Country For Old Men". But, for me, the only problem with the "Slumdog Millionaire" backlash is that the film, an overdirected, sentimental fantasy about one-dimensional characters in poverty, has been so overpraised, overhyped, lionized that it made a backlash almost inevitable. Could it be, that, in this case, people are just waking up and smelling the coffee? Also, I've been wondering, Danny Boyle gets rewarded for this, his weakest film(yes, worse than "A Life Less Ordinary") and not for "Transpotting", one of the finest films of the last 20 years? WTF?

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I think this happens, more often than not, with movies that are "under the radar"... so to speak. If it's something like The Dark Knight, and it gets alot of hype, that's a different thing altogether. People expect those movies to get talked about to death. But when it's a movie that just, all of a sudden, gets tons of press, and isn't a high-profile film, and you can't go anywhere on the web without reading about it... well, that's different. Slumdog Millionaire is an example of the latter. Juno is another one of those films, as well. It came out of nowhere, with little promotion, until it was hailed by critics at some film festival. By the way, I watched Juno and didn't really care much for it. It was alright, but it's not really my cup of tea. Not to say it was a bad film, it did what it was suppossed to I guess, it just wasn't my thing. To each their own, I suppose.

Anyway, I think alot of this backlash is due to Slumdog Millionaire possibly being one of "those" movies... and by "those" I mean movies that people go off about to their friends because they think it makes them seem "cooler", somehow, for knowing about and liking a film most people have never heard of. Or at the very least never heard of until they mentioned it to them. There are those people, and then you have the people who get annoyed by those people... and I think the backlash probably comes from the annoyed. It's understandable, in my opinion, because I know people that go out of their way to find, watch, and talk about films that are under the radar... and I know enough about said individuals to know why they do it. Slumdog Millionaire may or may not be one of "those" films, but I bet some of the backlash is due to this dynamic. I blame the internet, but that's another topic.

Anyway, hype and the aforementioned dynamic is no reason not to like the film, or any film, or to dismiss it having not seen it.. but I understand why it happens. I watched the trailer for Slumdog, basically because I kept seeing articles about it, and didn't see what the fuss was about. It didn't grab me, or make me want to see it, but that's just me. It's not my kind of film. Even if there are people who don't want to see the film, or are giving it bad press, because of all the positive press it's been getting then that's their right. They can choose not to like it for whatever reason they choose, even if they haven't seen it. I'm sure each and every one of us has been guilty of this at some point, with movies or music or something. If anything gets enough press, and people won't shut up about it, it's bound to get on someone's nerves. Not to say this makes whatever it is bad, or that it's the fault of whatever it is that it gets alot of hype, but that's the way it works. Deal with it...

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Great article, Eric. Let me also point out that while you shouldn't let early reviews taint or bias you opinion of the film (prior to seeing it), you also shouldn't let the "backlash" taint your enjoyment of repeated viewings. In other words, don't let it get to you.
The backlash for films like Juno, Napolean D, or Blair Witch Project has not tempered my enjoyment of repeated viewings.

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Don't forget there are also those people who don't like a film, but after it wins an award they start thinking it was better than they thought it was...no wait...it was a great movie!

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Great post Eric. I tried thinking of something to contribute to this, but really couldn't write down anything worthwhile, so I just wanted to put down some more support of the topic. Very well written and insightful, keep it up :)

Oh yeah, anyone that doesn't like Slumdog probably also hates puppies and smiling babies. There, I said it.

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"Our colleagues at SpoutBlog are proud of the fact that they disliked Slumdog before it was cool to do so..."

It's not really an issue of "pride". It's more that we were eviscerated by commenters for posting a critical review, then suddenly after that film won a couple of Golden Globes, new commenters showed up in agreement with our original, 4 month old review. I don't think your point about backlashes is much different from my point -- I don't understand why it's suddenly "legal" (I wouldn't say "cool", because the kind of vitriol involved in these back-and-forths, at least on our site, defies the very essence of "cool") to not like the film. We kind of just wish that we had been able to be critical of it from the beginning (because you know -- that's our job), without having to suffer personal attacks.

But what do I know? I sincerely hate both puppies and babies, smiling or not, so that must mean that my opinions about films are de facto wrong.

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best post i've read on this site

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I think there should be a distinction between believing a movie is "overrated" and hating a movie because others like it.

For example, I think Fight Club is hugely overrated. It's a pretty well-made movie, but I think the story is contrived, and I've never much cared for Edward Norton.

Let's compare that to the haters on the imdb boards for directors like Tarantino and Shyamalan. Their hatred doesn't stem from the fact they think their movies are bad. They hate these directors because they're hugely successful despite the fact they didn't like their movies.

It's simply a difference between true thought-based opinion and emotionally-driven opinion.

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Great post. I always find it amusing when people get pissed off when you didn't like a movie, as if they were personally responsible for the movie in question.

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I hate the word "overrated", it makes no damn sense. It's either you like the film or not.

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