Why You Can't Trust Your Favorite Movie Critic to Tell You a Film is Bad

Thunder Force is a fun movie
with a few problems. It isn't
embarrassingly bad.

If you're like me you probably have two or three 'go to' movie critics that you trust to tell you if a movie is worth seeing. You'll particularly listen to their opinion if you're thinking about seeing a film in a theatre.

The problem is, movie critics review movies for a living. This means, they see a lot of movies, probably way more than you will ever see in your lifetime. As such, their scale of what make a movie good or bad becomes somewhat skewed by a much wider grading scale.

That said, if your trusted movie critic says a movie is good, you can pretty much rely on their opinion. They see a lot of films that are just okay, so if something stands out to them, there's a strong chance you'll think it's great too.

Ultimately whether a film is good or bad is entirely subjective to individual viewers however subjectivity comes into play in a much bigger way if a film fails to impress the critic. In this situation it's a sliding scale of what the critic actually likes, subjectively, that plays a big part in whether they conclude a film is 'just okay' or 'really bad' (not that these are the only conclusions but just for simplicity's sake of this discussion).

Taking out of the equation movies that are obviously made with poor production values, lets assume everyone from the director, down to the catering, all really tried to make the best version of their movie. Yet your trusted movie critic still rates their film as 'bad', so bad that they literally say some of the film's stars should be embarrassed to be in it.

I'm not going to name the movie critic, but that recently happened with me on the Netflix movie, Thunder Force, staring Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, and Jason Bateman. No one on that film set out to make a bad film. I recently listened to an interview with writer, director, Ben Falcone, and he was quite proud of how the movie turned out.

Now I'm not going to claim Thunder Force is fantastic, high art by any means. It has quite a few plot problems, and early on there is a comedic (supposedly) scene between Melissa and Jason that is so cringe it's quite possibly why my trusted movie critic threw the movie under a bus. I'd argue, if you left that scene out, it's a fairly solid comedy superhero film.

However my critic repeatedly stated the movie was "bad, so bad", that I thought I was going to watch a complete train wreck. 

Anyway, to make my point. I find it disappointing when I see people not see movies that they potentially would have liked simply because their trusted movie critic (or friend who saw the film) said it was no good.

I remember one movie critic I used to trust would wax lyrical about any new Fast and Furious movie and yet rolled her eyes at 'yet another superhero movie'. Any time I've tried to watch a Fast and Furious film I've been so bored I struggled to make it through them. That critic has since retired.

The critics I trust generally like the same genres of movies as I do, specifically superhero, comic book films. Yet many times I've enjoyed films that they've given really low scores to. One of my critics I even stopped watching for a few years because they continually seemed to not like films that I did and would've expected them to like too.

By all means take on board what your favorite critics have to say but don't assume your taste is exactly the same. Also remember that they do see a lot of films for a living so they have a much wider grading scale of what makes a film 'good' to them. Art is subjective after all.