Weak sauce, Movieline. Weak. SAUCE.
So the folks out at Movieline were trying to figure out why Jennifer’s Body turned out to be a stink bomb that audiences could actually smell coming, and they’ve got plenty of blame to go around. Lousy distro, lousy marketing–pretty much everything except a godawful and derivative script that heavily featured nonsense words.
And then they got to point five: the critics. Dig the spectacularly pretentious word:
5. The critics. Horror and teen comedy are two genres proven time and again to be invulnerable to reviewers (when they’re even screened for reviewers). Put them together, though — especially in a semi-satirical fashion that turns the first genre’s sex-and-death conventions on their heads — and you get a whole lot of dickheads sniping that Body didn’t do enough to adhere to convention. “Jennifer’s Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre,” wrote the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr. Sigh.
First off, what drove you to actually WRITE “sigh” in there as if you were so deeply stricken with the ennui of the whole mess that you were about to collapse in a graceful heap on your fainting couch? Oh, Little Lord Fauntleroy can’t hang because we’re trashing his favorite movie so he’s just overwrought!
Man up or hang it up, jackass. And you want to call me a dickhead? Fine. I reserve the right to call you jackass. Of course, considering that this was written by one S.T. Vanairsdale, there’s no way to know whether I’m using the right gender or not, so we’re using the ROYAL he just in case.
Granted, S.T. did call a lot of the problems. This really should’ve taken advantage of Halloween instead of gunning for last-gasp on summer. But don’t blame the critics. That’s just low. We didn’t like it. We thought it sucked. I got sick of this derivative knockoff spewing gibberish every few minutes.
Critics didn’t kill it. They just wrote the obituary.
Bill said
September 22 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Nice post. It’s funny watching people come to the defense of this film this week. Cinematical, who’s own critic hammered the film mercilessly, had a while screed claiming that the film would make miraculous recovery this week based on new Internet support for the film. Wha??!!??
Seriously, I can’t remember a film getting this much ink after it opened with a per screen average that won’t even get it’s P & A costs back. Usually, they just pack up the posters and try and get it out on DVD in time for X-mas.
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Paul said
September 22 2009 @ 8:48 pm
i wouldn’t go by to much into what cinematical had to say about the film they are crazy over there
Steve Anderson said
September 22 2009 @ 11:43 pm
“Internet support”?? Holy hell, why not just pin it on space aliens? To suggest this will somehow RALLY THE INTERNET to support it is like suggesting that you can reinflate a tire by buying a bucket of chicken. And in case you’re thinking that analogy makes no sense, that’s okay. Because neither does the idea that this will come back thanks to the interwebz.
Dustin said
September 23 2009 @ 12:28 pm
You say critics didn’t like this film, and yet I have seen enough positive reviews of it, including one from Roger Ebert no less. The film received mixed reviews. To act as though it was universally or even largely critically panned is just plain dishonest. And we all know that box office numbers do not always indicate how good a film is or even that it is good at all. Just because a film does well at the box office does not mean that it is a good film (see how much big box office hit “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was panned). And a film that does poor at the box office does not mean that it is a bad film. If anything, “Jennifer’s Body” is simply mediocre.
Dustin said
September 23 2009 @ 12:30 pm
Correction — You imply that all or most critics didn’t like this film.
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September 23 2009 @ 9:09 pm
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