Everyone's a critic

I think I pointed out the other day that anyone who can lift a pen or use a keyboard thinks they're a critic. The sad fact is that exceedingly few of us are really informed enough to make judgments about the never-ending supply if new media and culture being thrown at our faces. Personally, I really loathe critics. Partly because I almost do subscribe to the view that one opinion can be as valuable as any other - even if for no other reason than it tells us about what a segment of society may be thinking. I just can't get into the idea that I need someone else to tell me whether something's good or not. No critic writes a column explaining why something's valuable or clever, instead they sit down and tell us whether it's "good" or not, which is the part I have a problem with.

I much prefer to be presented with the information about something and then allowed to develop my own opinions. Just because I haven't spent my whole life watching movies and talking about them (which by the way scarcely seems like the kind of activity that would make you qualified to do anything) doesn't mean that I, as a viewer of movies, cannot sit down and say "I like that" or vice versa.

And the sad thing is that all critics seem to come from the same background. You can guarantee that anything coming out of The Guardian, The Telegraph or any other smarty pants paper with a features editor who no doubt graduated Oxford with a first and has nobby friends who like to have wine and cheese parties is going to be written by an academic who will only know what the film brings to them personally. I imagine they're waiting for their mighty brain to be warped by the next big thing, and unsurprisingly everything in between is going to be a disappointment. Papers like The Sun are full of crap, judgmental bullshit aimed at people who like boobs and see it as a necessary part of their morning schedule.

I mean, what's with that? seriously? Yes, boobs are harmless (I'm aware of that, I happen to have a pair of my own) but that doesn't mean they need to be pasted all over page three with half paragraph about some doe-eyed dopey looking bitch with an inane grin plastered to her face. Anyway, I digress.

I guess basically I probably wouldn't know a good film if it smacked me in the face. The Dark Knight was too long, Ironman had a crap ending battle, Zach and Miri had good gags, but the plot didn't hang together. I don't see that many movies, but nothing I've seen this year has impressed me much. Mamma Mia was pointless, with weak vocal performances in places and is just not a very good musical, Sex and the City was just plain crap. I guess I've named there a selection of movies from this year, and whether the critics liked them or not, I didn't like any of them. I'm even beginning to get used to how films that DON'T end happily end. It's that bad. I want someone to bring on a film that isn't so bloody formulaic, because I am so tired of guessing what's going to happen before we're even an hour in.

I don't pretend to know anything about anything, but I do know what I like, and throughout my life I've never met anyone who would change the things that they truly like just because somebody else didn't like it, so why do we employ critics at all? So somebody can ruin things for us before we even give it a fair chance to impress us? Nothing's crap til I say it is, God damn it.