Stossel: When Reviewers Always Rave
May 18 -- Remember the movie The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc? It was a flop. The Chicago Tribune called it "staggeringly awful."
Yet somehow someone named Bonnie Churchill of the National News Syndicate called it "a masterpiece, an epic with a heart and soul."
Churchill also said Kim Basinger deserved another Oscar for I Dreamed of Africa, a movie so tedious it led one reviewer to suggest they revoke her Academy Award. Others used words like "meandering mess" and "like watching paint dry."
Then there's The Beach, a huge flop with Leonardo DiCaprio. Most critics jeered, but reviewer Earl Dittman marveled at its "stunning cinematic brilliance."
Who are these people who rave about films that are bombs?
Mysterious Critics
Neither Dittman nor Churchill would talk to us. Dittman claims to write for something called Wireless magazine, which no one we know has ever heard of.
Churchill has a Web site that says she has a radio show. But no one we talked to in radio had ever heard of that either.
No matter, both Churchill and Dittman are still featured in ad after ad. We couldn't find a single movie they didn't like.
Why do some reviewers consistently give glowing reviews to terrible movies? Maybe they like them, but maybe it's something else. Movie insiders tell us too many reviewers are wined and dined on media junkets, where studios give away free trips to Hollywood, and lots of free food and free gifts.
Now I don't know that Churchill or Dittman attend these junkets, or take any gifts, but they sure do get their names in the papers a lot, giving us all high expectations of the movies they supposedly liked — like the latest Crocodile Dundee movie, which Churchill claims is "hysterical fun for the whole family."
I'm sure some people laughed, but many people coming out of the movie were stunned when we showed them the ad.
"What are they, kidding?" asked one father.
Another man put it bluntly: "I mean, I just think it sucked," he told us.
