TO SEE OR NOT TO SEE
Forget someone else’s star ratings. The function of movie guides is to inform you who’s in a film and what it’s about, so that you can decide for yourself.
SEP 5, 2010 – SITTING ON MY DESK IS A NEW REINCARNATION of an old, old friend – Leonard Maltin’s 2011 Movie Guide. The blurb says it all: “More than 17,000 entries. Including 300+ new entries. More than 12,000 DVD and 13,000 video listings.” The back cover carries a rave from The New York Times Book Review (“The go-to choice for both film geeks and casual couch potatoes”) and a slightly more pedantic thumbs-up from Roger Ebert’s Video Companion (“I recommend Leonard Maltin’s guide, which has become standard”). The first version of the guide I saw was in my local library, a couple of streets from home. In those days, 1987-88 I think, summer vacations meant a lot of reading in the afternoons, and when I saw this doorstop of a book promising to enlighten me (if only in capsule form) about every single movie ever made, I couldn’t help slipping it under my shirt and scurrying away.
I suppose that’s how you know you’re going to end up, however tangentially, in a career related to films – when a windfall like this flashes in front of your eyes and you just have to have it, right there, right then, for fear that another customer might come along and snatch it away before you can run home and examine your pocket money situation and see if there’s enough to cover this rather expensive volume. I subsequently read it all, from Aaron Loves Angela through Zulu Dawn. In those pre-Internet days, getting information about Hollywood and other foreign films meant a long trek to the USIS or British Council libraries, or perhaps a roadside vendor of old books might have an unexpected diamond amidst his coals. But here, right in my own two hands, was this treasure trove. We were inseparable that summer, Maltin and I.
My film reviewing faculties were still inchoate then, so I treated Maltin’s verdicts as commandments. Back then, as opposed to now, I thought film critics were Olympian gods who decreed whether you had good taste or not, so more often than not, I’d look up my favourite films and see how Maltin had dealt with them. I recall two particular examples – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which I’d seen on the VCR of a distant relative I’d sucked up to just because of that VCR) and The Goonies. Desert-island classics, right? Maltin should have awarded an automatic four stars, right? (His ratings range from four stars to BOMB, the latter for bottom-of-the-barrel movies.) Wrong! Temple of Doom (“headache-inducing prequel”) got a mere two stars and The Goonies (“exceptionally noisy, aimed squarely at kids”) fared only marginally better, with two-and-a-half stars. That was it. The man had spoken. I had no taste.
Today, I have to say that my knowledge of several obscure films comes from Maltin’s guide. Much later, when I faced a row of DVDs at a library, for instance, I’d instantly be drawn to what I wanted to see because of what I remembered from Maltin’s descriptions. That’s the real function of a guide such as this one, not to validate taste but to provide a synopsis of films so you know whether to watch them or not – not because he said it’s worth watching but because you felt, despite his ultimate rating, that the synopsis intrigued you. The stars, ultimately, are useless, meaningless. They’re also terribly misleading, as I’ve discovered from my own experience. I’d have awarded a rom-com a three-star rating and a serious drama a two-star rating, and readers will think that, in my estimation, the rom-com is better than the drama. And that is so not the case. All this means is that this particular rom-com is better than a rom-com that got two stars, and that this particular drama is not as good as the other one that got three stars.
You cannot compare within genres based on stars. You cannot predict your own liking of a film based on someone else’s star ratings. You cannot foresee box-office performance based on stars (well, the human kind maybe). Why, then, do we persist with star ratings? I suppose it’s a remnant of years of movie evaluation, when people thought the business of a film critic was to tell us whether to go and watch a film or preferably stay in and look at paint dry. Maltin’s guide – and others of this ilk – has a valuable function to perform but it’s not whether you should or shouldn’t watch a movie. Get an idea of what the film is about, who’s in it, what awards it won, what controversies it stirred up, how long it runs, whether it’s in Cinemascope or Super 35 – but make the decision (to watch) on your own. In this era of Google and IMDb, it’s difficult to see why someone would depend on a mammoth, wrist-unfriendly paperback such as this one, but it does make a hell of a blunt weapon to bring down on the skull of anyone who thinks The Goonies doesn’t deserve four stars.
Copyright ©2010 The New Sunday Express. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Abhirup
September 4, 2010
So, what your rating of ‘The Temple of Doom’ and ‘Goonies’? I am especially interested about the latter, since my own memory of it has turned somewhat hazy, having last seen it more than ten years ago.
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Arun
September 5, 2010
heh! super piece!
reminds me of the time I used to read the ratings and entries for the entire days schedule of star movies when cable TV first appeared.
But all I had was an uncle’s hand-me-down version of Mick Martin and Marsha Porter’s video movie guide.
and I’d be terribly disappointed too when I saw a turkey against some of my favorites.
I still resent those damn turkeys!
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Arun
September 5, 2010
and oh, your ‘part of the picture’ list is now officially my current foreign video movie guide.
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Jabberwock
September 5, 2010
*Cough cough* http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-four-star-movie-guide.html
We’ve spoken about the Maltin guide before, haven’t we? It’s really funny (especially given my disdain for the star-rating system today), but because I experienced that book at such an impressionable age and because I pored over it so closely for months, I STILL tend to think of some classic films as “three-and-a-half star” or “four-star” movies depending on how Maltin rated them. I still reflexively think of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver as a two-star movie, for example (Maltin didn’t think highly of it), and then I remind myself, “No, hold on – I thought that was a great film!”
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Jabberwock
September 5, 2010
P.S. Baradwaj, do I sense a smidgen of genre-snobbery here?
“I’d have awarded a rom-com a three-star rating and a serious drama a two-star rating, and readers will think that, in my estimation, the rom-com is better than the drama…”
Or do you just have a personal preference for “serious dramas” (whatever that blanket description might mean) as opposed to rom-coms?
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bran1gan
September 5, 2010
Abhirup: Oh, I don’t know. Goonies is embalmed with the amber of my nostalgia. I think I’d be scared to see it again and discover it’s not as great on TV as it is in my mind.
Arun: Oh, I have Mick Martin’s guide too. I had a whole bunch of them those days, and one of my favourite to-do things in those early-cable used to be comparing how different guides rated the same movie.
Jai: We spoke about this at length at that Connaught Place restorbar 🙂 (Forget the name now.) No, that’s no snobbery. Just picked two genres at random. You could substitute sci-fi and Western in the sentence if you wish.
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Pradip
September 5, 2010
What you did with maltin, I did with your blog when I came across it.
I sat the whole night, reading your reviews and comparing them with my ideas about those films.
The results of the comparisons were mixed though, unlike your encounter with maltin 😉
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
Man I can publish the same article as mine with almost zero changes. The only change here would be the year of the guide – 2006. And I can’t echo Jabberwock’s sentiments more. It’s a very impressionable book that will color your perception if you are starting. Cases in point are many including Taxi Driver (Maltin made me hate it, I love it now), Schindler’s List (Maltin made me love it, I hate it now), Elephant (Maltin made me hate it, I still do) and many more.
The book is in tatters now. It was my favorite pastime for some period of time, reading those BOMB, 1.5 and 4 star reviews. Now I find many of the reviews rather mainstream and bland.
What are your favorite capsules? Some that I can recollect are (I’m copying from the book)
1. Promise, The (1979): Boy loves girl. Girl loses face in accident. Boy thinks girl dead. Girl gets new face from plastic surgeon. Boy falls for old girl’s new face. Viewer runs screaming from room. Panavision [PG]
2. Casablanca (1942): … Our candidate for the greatest Hollywood movie of all time…
3. Isn’t It Romantic (1948): No
4. Police Academy (1984): …Generally good-natured comedy (with typical 80s doses of sexism and tastelessness)…
5. Police Academy 2 (1985): …Dreadful follow-up to the 1984 hit. There are Dragnet episodes with more laughs than this movie.
6. Police Academy 3 (1986): An improvement over #2, but that’s not saying much. Just another collection of pea-brained gags and amateurish performances.
7. Police Academy 4 (1987): More of the same, only worse.
8. Police Academy 5 (1988): …Fourth attempt to improve on imperfection is no charm. What can you say about a sequel Steve Guttenberg won’t even appear in?
9. Police Academy 6 (1989): Those wacky cops are back to solve a crime perpetrated by a trio that makes The Three Stooges look like Nobel laureates. This entry is only – repeat only – for those thought Police Academy 5 was robbed at Oscar time.
10. Police Academy 7 (1994): They waited five years to make another chapter in this mindless series. It wasn’t worth the wait.
And bleddy, Maltin’s guide spoils Psycho.
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
jabberwock: Stole my words…
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Abhirup
September 5, 2010
I can understand. Sometimes, the critic we fear most is the one within us; more than hearing Leonard Maltin say it, we are afriad to hear this critic say that we have no taste!
But what about ‘The Temple of Doom’? Surely you can tell me how you would rate that one?
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Jabberwock
September 5, 2010
Just Another Film Buff: I still remember every word of the Psycho entry in my Maltin guide – can practically recite it backwards. In fact, I mentioned it in this piece about Psycho.
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bran1gan
September 5, 2010
JAFB: Et tu? 🙂 Regarding your point about the capsules being “mainstream and bland,” I guess that’s inevitable with a book of this nature. What can you really do other than a quick synopsis and a rating? BTW, I remember that Promise review, and did you know that it was remade as Yeh Vaada Raha, an equally terrible film with Rishi Kapoor, Poonam Dhillon and Tina Munim? Superlative soundtrack, though, by RD Burman.
Abhirup: I guess Temple of Doom would be three-and-a-half stars (out of five)? Can’t say for sure, because haven’t seen it in a while.
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
Ah, this I might not agree with. Most of the reviews take a hipster, anti-intellectual stance that show of their style more than insight. Even if the reviews are small, I’d think that they can be made very incisive.
I see that, given that it’s a recco book for most beginners, you can’t ask for more. But that doesn’t make it any better than it is, right?!
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
Also, reg. The Promise. I haven’t seen the film. But the premise sounds far from the kind of reaction it has been given. I think it’s sort of profound. If only Almodovar runs it through his magic machine!
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bran1gan
September 5, 2010
JAFB: Insta-replies even on a Sunday? Okay, repeat after me: “I am going to shut down my computer and finally go get myself some sunlight!” 🙂 Yes, I do agree that the lack of incisiveness doesn’t make it better.
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
On the contrary. Just back from two days of sunlight. So, soaked on the internet right now…
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Just Another Film Buff
September 5, 2010
BTW, it’s too late for sunshine here, may be some moonshine…
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Abhirup
September 6, 2010
Ah, three and a half stars out of five sounds quite appropriate, though, given that this was my first Indy film, my nostalgia may persuade me to raise the rating to four stars.
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anamika
September 10, 2010
Br, I actually read your reaviews after watching the film.After the film, moi pen a few thoughts,edit it,preen over it,conjure gost-like avatar of an editor and the morning after compare it with your piece- and give myself a star rating based on how close and far it is to the crtical view!!
Thanks for another piece that shoes us that good writing and cinema are excellent bedfellows!
meanwhile , do you have any lectures on this weekend…am in the city and would be great to know if there is some underground establisment where the cinemaphiles meet over spirits and such…!
cheers
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