Roger Ebert
Critics face this problem all the time: We all carry around with us certain likes, dislikes, prejudices and personal baggage. That means we may not always be well suited to review everything that comes our way. Yet we do it anyway, usually without revealing our conflicts-of-disinterest. One wonders, for example, how critic Roger Kimball, a champion of “classical realism,” will be able to credibly review the work of certain major art movements after categorically dismissing, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “pop, op, minimalism, and neo-Dada performance art that have infested the art world like a gigantic flea market.”
Full disclosure from me: I rarely watch television and I have never had the patience to view an episode of “Sex and the City” from beginning to end (even though I was a great Baryshnikov fan in his heyday). But I have close (single) friends who are passionate fans and would never accept a phone call from me at the show’s appointed hour.
Only Ebert, whom I always find an informed, lively, literate guide to the tastes of average popcorn gorgers (as distinguished from jaded reviewers) was up-front about the critical shortcomings inherent in being far removed from this movie’s target audience.
His confided at the outset:
I am not the person to review this movie. Perhaps you will enjoy a
review from someone who disqualifies himself at the outset, doesn’t
much like most of the characters and is bored by their bubble-brained
conversations. Here is a 145-minute movie containing one line of
truly witty dialogue: “Her 40s is the last age at which a bride can be
photographed without the unintended Diane Arbus subtext.” That
line might not reverberate with audience members who don’t know who
Diane Arbus was. But what about me, who doesn’t reverberate with the
names of designer labels?
I love this guy.