Andres Gallego
09/15/2010
Reviewing the arts
There are plenty of reviews, but few are able to really convey the sense of the viewer’s emotional experience reviewing the work. The first piece that works as a review is Devin Faraci’s Negative review for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” In the beginning of this scathing review, Devin calls out on the notion of how this big budgeted summer blockbuster didn’t need to aspire to be anything bigger than a fun giant robot film. Feraci, like the audience, was expecting to have fun with the film but ended up asking himself “how is a giant robot film boring?” The review goes on to explain what Devin’s emotional response was to the reader. He aptly puts the viewer in his shoes in the cinema by describing how the combination of the flat jokes, boring character work, incomprehensible action, and long stretches of nothing made him turn to his colleague and exclaim “This is grueling.” This film brought up all of these feelings...and he was only in the first act. That statement sums his emotional experience and that’s an experience nobody wants when they drop ten dollars on a big budgeted spectacle like a “Transformers” picture. Feraci in his writing can have so much to say for a great film experience that when it comes to this film; he nails it square on the head with this hilarious statement: “Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman claim that director Micheal Bay locked them in a hotel room for a month to write this movie; they obviously spent 29 and half days watching pay per view porn and ordering room service.”
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19948/1/REVIEW-TRANSFORMERS---REVENGE-OF-THE-FALLEN-/Page1.html
One review that doesn’t work is Armond White’s review of Toy Story 3. Armond’s hatred towards Toy Story 3 has as many holes in his argument as large screen door. Most of the review is spent with White seemingly trying to defend himself and his beliefs as opposed to what his experience in the cinema was. He starts off the review frustrated with the fact that America and critics have forgotten the film he thinks is a superior toy film. The review comes off as more or less a nitpick of the film than anything. White says the film is full of “brand names and product placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of the imagination…” That statement is said without any real points to back it up. He only goes on to his next point about the plot abruptly before the reader has any sense of what White was talking about with the last point about why the film isn’t imaginative. The biggest flaw about the review is that the tone of the review is very uninviting. While Devin Farci’s scathing of “Transformers 2” was brutal at points, his tone was more inviting in the sense that Feraci was coming from the viewpoint of the audience who wanted a great time at the cinema. White’s tone takes more of “anybody who likes Toy Story is tool.” without mentioning his experience as to why he was disappointed. Absolutism doesn’t make for a good review and neither does White’s “review.”
http://www.nypress.com/article-21357-bored-game.html
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