You will believe a rat can cook..and follow his dreams, and will cheer for him to take over a restaurant.
If you’ve ever seen Ratatouille, you will find yourself almost cheering for rats. Somehow, Pixar made us believe that it was okay to for rats to infest a restaurant, make a good meal, and inspire a person to believe that no matter their dream, no matter the impossibility of achieving it, they could achieve it. You will believe a rat can stand up to a critic.
As you know, the villain of the story was a food critic. He had such a reputation in the city, that any negative review he gave could shut down a restaurant. For some reason, many critics have power, whether they earn it by being honest and real in examining every aspect of a movie, a TV show, a restaurant or otherwise. Or it could be that we, the reader of the critique give it to them, by actually listening to the opinion of someone who we don’t know from Adam. Either way, I’m not immune to critics. And I’ve been one myself. But let’s be honest. If we listened to the critics everytime they told us something, we never would have seen our favorite cult classic.
Scott Pilgrim is a what I like to call a fight musical. Instead of breaking out in song, they break out in fights.
For some reason critics lambaste comedies and if they were to be believed no one would ever watch any comedies ever. Happy Gilmore, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Ace Ventura are some of my all time favorites that I never would have seen if critics were to believed. And maybe critics hated Transformers, but as a long time fan of the cartoons, toys and movies as a kid, nothing they could say would ever make me not like any of the Transfomer movies.
You might see them as just another bad Micheal Bay movie, but to me they are “More than Meets the Eye”.
Then again, you could always trust your own opinions, based on who knows what. And when have your instincts ever been right? You could always believe that 2 minute 30 second trailer you watched over and over again. Or you could listen to one of your friends or family members that said Gigli was really great. Or you could read a 5 sentence description of a movie and just know that it will be the greatest movie since sliced Green Tomatoes. Sometimes your motivation might just be to prove critics and audiences wrong, and no matter what they say, you aren’t going to not see the movie. And it is a badge of honor sometimes to like a movie that no one else liked, because you saw something no one else saw. Regardless, there are a lot of reasons you can be wrong and can be just as dumb as a critic. I’ve read blogs that no one else was reading and was pretty proud of myself for “discovering it” and enjoying that all you fools aren’t reading it.
So, whose instincts do you go with? Someone who sees hundreds of movies a year and has become numb to what real people like in a movie? Or do you trust your own instincts which have driven you to hundreds and hundreds of bad decisions every single day? Who is the one you trust to lead you astray? Let me know in the comments.
ARRRGGHHHHHH
Bitter Critical Mass Ben