There’s no shame in a movie not working for you. This is something I’ve come to terms with over the course of my movie-watching career. Very few movies, or anything that ultimately often comes down to taste preferences, are universally appreciated. This isn’t a flaw to the system; it’s how the system works. It’s how taste works. Different strokes for different folks and all that. It takes all kinds, etc. etc. I have no beef with people who simply don’t dig a movie or show or whatevs that I care deeply about. There’s plenty of stuff that others think is great that I’m not into for one reason or another.
Here’s where issues arise though: it’s in the reasons people give for not liking something. It’s usually more appropriate to place the responsibility for not liking a movie, especially if people have been making pretty airtight and detailed cases for its greatness, on yourself. I’m not blaming Amour for the fact that it didn’t connect with me. Everyone else who’s seen it seems to think it was devastating. And I was probably tired and cranky when I watched it late at night. I can’t say why I didn’t get into it, but I didn’t. No worries, right?
For lots of people that’s not good enough. They seem to think giving some meaningless explanation for not liking a movie will give their taste some sort of credibility. I’ve witnessed enough of this kind of talk, from critics and mainstream moviegoers alike, to identify a few cliché criticisms people make when they obviously can’t think of anything original or interesting to say about why a movie didn’t work for them. Because they don’t seem to simply think the movie didn’t work for them; it’s that it doesn’t work as a movie. If it didn’t appeal to them specifically then it’s a failure as a piece of work. Or it didn’t conform to some imaginary “rules” about filmmaking. Come on.
Here are 7 things people will say are a movie’s shortcomings when they don’t know what they’re talking about. Watch out for them because they usually show a person is BS-ing you. It’s not to say everyone who says this stuff is completely clueless, but rather that one who is completely clueless tends to rely on these tropes. Sorry if this is a little ranty.
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