So Much for Critics...

My family has a tradition. We enjoy going to the movies on Thanksgiving Day. We actually also tend to go on Christmas Day. We were deciding what movie to see.

Thanksgiving and Christmas, movie wise, is not the type of movie where one has to think a whole lot. It needs to be funny, feel good, or both. Nothing too taxing. The Jason Bourne movies do not fit the bill on the holidays.

It pretty much boiled down to "August Rush" or "Enchanted." I printed out the reviews. "Enchanted" got really good reviews and I still want to see it. It does look funny.

But "August Rush" got dismal reviews. On critic said that it wasn't a bad movie, it was an aggressively bad movie.

Funny thing on Yahoo, however. The critics reviews were harsh and awful. It barely earned a 'C,' grade wise. But Yahoo users gave it a 'B+." Huge difference. Over my grumpiness and self-righteous statements of my personal sacrifice in seeing such nonsense, we went.

So much for the critics. The music was great and Freddie Highmore demonstrates, again, that he is the best child actor out there right now. The story had some holes in it. Most do. The movie needed to be edited a bit more aggressively. It was about 15 minutes too long.

It was sentimental and maybe even corny, but the characters in this movie are difficult to dislike. Even Robin Williams, "The Wizard," who is the 'bad guy' in the movie has some very endearing qualities. It is ultimately a story of two great musicians who have one night together and circumstances keep them apart and a child neither one is aware of is out there in an orphanage, hearing music and believing that the music comes from Mom and Dad and will one day bring them together. The boy, who is a musical prodigy, determines that his music will be heard and Mom and Dad will find him and they will all live happily ever after.

It strains a bit and stretches things a bit and you can probably figure out how it ends.

But when it ends and you look around the theater, people are drying their eyes and feeling good. It was obvious that the people enjoyed the movie a lot. I enjoyed the movie a lot.

Then I remembered something. I once watched one of the most critically acclaimed movies of all times. Critics loved it. It was called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The length of that movie was about 2 months long. Long, long film. Taught me a lesson. Don't ever see a movie with the word 'unbearable' in it. Critics loved it.

So much for critics...