Friday, May 11, 2012

Reviewing The Reviews: 'The Dictator'


The Hollywood Reporter's review of ‘The Dictator” was published at 1:30 a.m. Todd McCarthy kind of liked it. So did Peter DeBruge, whose Variety review was published at 3:30 a.m. The Wrap doesn’t yet have a review up. Deadline, of course, doesn’t review movies, because they understand business: paying people a lot of money to give an opinion rarely translates into dollars. Especially for the tight-margin trade business. But I digress: THR's review is typical Todd: cerebral, especially for a movie like this. Variety’s is the same because, of course, Peter DeBruge is one of Todd’s disciples (who took Todd's job after the great Variety purge of 2010). So the reviews are all very “cinema”-ish instead of fun reads. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing -- what keeps them different than everyonbe else – or a bad thing, considering reviews should be, ya know, enjoyable. What do you think?

2 comments:

  1. I agree with your general observation. In the spirit of this comedy, THR should have perhaps seriously considered a tongue-in-cheek second companion review by an unnamed, former resident of Waadeya.

    I didn't have time to fully peruse RT, but perhaps someone has done something like this already:

    http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dictator_2012/

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  2. The movie was usual Cohen doing what he does best.

    Check out my review .

    Cheers!

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