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So are any of these things "good" or "bad" (obviously the high gross of Blades is not "bad", just "different") or are you just the messenger?

If we spend half as much time trying to figure out how to support the movies we love instead of complaining about the success of films we don’t, the whole movie loving world would be better off.

DP, that's the most sensible thing I've read on this blog in a good long while.

What's going on with Gregg Kilday? Has the HR made you an offer yet?

66% positive on rotten tomatoes for Blades of Glory.

I wouldn't call that poorly reviewed.

Blades of Glory was surprisingly well reviewed. Don't know where Poland's getting his anti-Ferrell meme from. Reading too much Jeffrey Wells?

Why is it the critics are always out of touch for hating crappy movies? How come it's never the audience is out of touch for loving crappy movies?

Cause the audience pays the bills.

It's still amuses me that people seem to think that audiences have only just started to go see bad movies in droves. As if they haven't been doing it for ages.

Part of the problem with the whole: 'critics out of touch/like good movies' and 'people are uniformed/like bad movies' argument is that it assumes a hegemony of tought and intent behind both groups.

That all critics come from an informed background and all consumers do not; nothing could be further from the truth.

Most critics do not have a film background and by just reading the average critic, my guess is the average one does not have a full grasp on cinema history pre-1970.

Similarly, just because someone who works hard at a tough job during the week and wants to go home and watch Will Ferrell does not make them un-intellectual.

I know one psychologist with a top practice who loves goofy comedies. After a hard week of hearing people's problems, he couldn't be bothered to watch the latest "woe is the world" dirge. He still has a family to raise and bills to pay. He needs a break.

Many critics are informed; but just as many I have read either follow the pack or rate for ideological reasons. Now that the dust has settled, can critics really say Little Miss Sunshine is a top tier film? Are we really going to think critics embrace of Children of Men (an extremely flawed film) had nothing whatsoever to do with ideology? Really.

Are we really going to believe that everyone who wants to laugh at Will Ferrell or watch 300 is an uninformed bumpkin?

Good and bad films come in all forms and yes there are many upon which critics and audiences disagree. But they also see them in different circumstances.

A couple going out to an evening paying a top ticket price with food will have very different standards than a critic who watches a film as part of a junket where he/she can press flesh with the star or a festival where the atmosphere is very different.

I'm not saying one is always right or always wrong, but the notions that audiences love bad movies and crix picks are always golden is silly.

Both can like/hate, good/bad films for a whole cornucopia of reasons.

Jeff, that's not the issue. The audience is just as capable of buying a ticket to a good movie as a bad one, but they willingly go to the garbage. And when they go to a crummy horror movie like HOSTEL instead of a great one like LAND OF THE DEAD, the industry responds with more HOSTELs and fewer LANDs. It's what Mad Magazine once called "The Law of Supply and Idiots."

I agree with Nicol's 'cornucopia' point but have to stress once again that 'ideology' is a part of everyone's decision-making, in varying degrees, not just the critics that he's trying to deride. Nicol, you like 300 and you don't like Children of Men because one conforms to your ideological stance and the other one doesn't - not because one is actually better made than the other. Both films are at or near the peak of current film craftsmanship on a technical level but they vary hugely in terms of story and directorial intention/execution.

Cadavra, there's more to it than 'seeking out garbage'. An audience is going to seek out a movie that gives them what they want like any other product. The difference between Hostel (which I like, by the way) and Land of the Dead (which I like more) isn't purely quality, but also impact: Hostel delivers more gore and suspense and has more relatable characters for a teen audience, while Land of the Dead must have seemed relatively stodgy and old-fashioned to a younger audience.

JeffMCM,

I disagree about 300 vs. Children of Men.

I think 300 has a very linear, limited scope for what it seeks to achieve and hits the bulls eye. It represents a simple story, but told effectively and in a way people can relate to. The themes are timeless ones.

Children of Men has far greater aspirations. It seeks to be a complex sci-fi story that is compelling in its own right, but also is a commentry on our own times. Now, it is as technically well made as 300, but it does fail on the second count. It works as an ideological screed but fails as a story with characters whose motivations are unclear and a central thesis that is dropped and unexplained.

That was the problem I had with it; Cuaron had no real interest in the main subject matter/text of the film and only used it as a coat hanger for his ideological agenda.

Snyder on the other hand let his simpler story come first, and because it was effective, people then projected onto it.

This is why I think Children of Men never really found an audience, even among sci-fi fans. It was politics first, story second. Yes, I think many critics overlooked this due to the films ideology.

The only difference between the movies is that Children of Men knew it was an 'ideological screed' to use your negatively-charged term, and 300 didn't but was one anyway. And I certainly prefer a film where the director is conscious of what he is doing than one where he isn't.

"Cuaron had no real interest in the main subject matter/text of the film"

You mean, Cuaron had no interest in the subject matter of the source novel and changed it for his own purposes. Obviously he was quite interested in the subject of the film.

Oh, the other primary difference between the two films is relevant to their box-office fates, my point about an audience getting what it wants. Children of Men is a dour, grim postapocalyptic art movie. The only way it could have made less money is if it was in a foreign language a la Letters from Iwo Jima.
Meanwhile, 300 is a garish, vivid, action-packed war-is-fun movie. It's pretty obvious which of those a mass audience is going to be more inclined to see.

My ideology is that Children of Men and 300 suck.

Critics are free to deride movies, the audience is free to ignore critics. That's democracy for you.

I just saw the trailer for I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Aside from looking terrible, the film had the most racist depiction of an East Asian (by Rob Schneider, no less) since Mickey Rooney's turn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I'm selling my Hollywood Stock Exchange shares in protest. I know racism isn't dead, but I thought we were way past this kind of caricature. Evidently not.

Schneider would probbaly argue that he can get away with it because he is Asian himself. But I totally agree that the image is completely jarring in today's world.

"And when they go to a crummy horror movie like HOSTEL instead of a great one like LAND OF THE DEAD, the industry responds with more HOSTELs and fewer LANDs. It's what Mad Magazine once called "The Law of Supply and Idiots.""

Hostel and Land of the Dead are equally as bad.

Camel, I hate to resort to a cliche, but: you gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me.

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