When was the last time a movie, a book, or a television show left you cold despite all your friends (and/or all the critics) raving about it? What was it that made you go against the critical consensus?
When I was working as a reporter in a newspaper, I seldom was going to the movies, because I worked even weekends till late at night.
Sometimes, just to be with my friends I went but I was always late. So I watched the movies from half to the end, completely disoriented, bothering my friends asking them about what was happening… a disaster. So there are many good movies that left me cool while my friends went out enthusiastic.
Finally I gave up and decided to wait and watch the movies complete from the beginning to the end at home when available in DVD.
But is not the same. The TV screen is not the theater screen, the sound has not comparison.
Many years ago I had to attend a premiere in my city. It was of a movie promoted by the regional government. A biopic of a XIX Century’s tenor called Julian Gayarre starring José Carreras (yes, one of the three tenors with Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti). There were great expectations. My newspaper sent me to write a reportage about the event and my opinion about the movie.
The audience and people around me were enthusiastic. I was dismayed. The movie was bad. The music was great, with Carreras singing beautifully several opera pieces, with his art and sensibility and his magnificent voice (it was before he got ill) but the movie was really bad. And I had to write my opinion about it in the middle of the general enthusiasm. So I did. I knew I wasn’t going to be the most popular writer in town next day.
Sometimes when I read reviews, I wonder if the reviewer (a) actually saw the movie at all and (b) if it was the SAME movie I just saw. Because there did not seem to be any congruence between the two! Nice you can think for yourself.
Same happens to me. Thank you for your comment. I hope my readers didn’t feel the same way as you.