I’ll be the first to admit I’m a pretty easily influenced person. When someone tells me I have to try a new restaurant, I tend to make it a higher priority than I otherwise would. When someone tells me a song is the worst they’ve ever heard, I hear it differently than I did when my ears were concerned only with my own opinion. This used to be the case for me with movies, too–that is, until recently, when I decided I wasn’t going to listen to what anyone else (especially professional critics) had to say about a film until I saw it myself. This is still a challenge because I’ve spent so long checking Rotten Tomatoes to decide whether or not a movie is worth my time or money. But it’s become easier and easier with each experience either loving a movie that critics hated or shutting a movie off halfway through that was supposed to blow me away.
Last night, my boyfriend and I were browsing Netflix for a movie that would keep us entertained but, at the same time, wouldn’t require too much mental engagement before calling it a night. After ten to fifteen minutes of suffering the First World problem we know so well I don’t even have to name it, we finally decided to give The Emoji Movie a shot. A recovering Rotten Tomatoes devotee, I couldn’t resist checking the rating as the opening scene played…
…8%. According to critics, this movie, to which I had just committed 90 minutes of my life, was 8% worth it and 92% a huge mistake. Roughly ten years of trusting this source to guide my decision making began attacking my choice to give it a chance. But my gut and my dignity spoke louder, reminding me, “Kirstin, you are super intrigued by the concept of walking, talking emojis, who are only capable of expressing their assigned emotion no matter who or what tests their limits” and “there’s no way James Corden (voice of the High-5 emoji) has it in him to do anything less than perfect.”
So, who was right? Film critic Bilge Ebiri, who called The Emoji Movie “boldly bad” and “boldly boring”, or my gut, which persuaded me to spend my evening on a movie that may or may not turn out to be better than what was indicated by the lack of praise from its audience. Well, according to me, whose opinion is the only one that matters in this situation, I wasn’t just right–I was better and wiser for listening to the voice in my own head instead of someone I didn’t even know, much less trust or respect.
Take it from a former Rotten Tomatoes junkie and recently-enlightened audience member–critics view films through a completely different lens than you, a casual moviegoer, ever will. The Overnight, which earned an 82% rating, is not good. I would’ve rated that movie an 8% if I’d had a say in it. Grown Ups, which received a 10% rating, is very good. My point is you simply can’t trust the word of someone whose job it is to pick apart movies from every possible angle and call things completely irrelevant to entertainment value into question. So if you’re like me, and their opinions are going to impede your ability to enjoy an awesome movie or decide you hate one that really sucks, then you’re better off not exposing yourself to them in the first place…
…With the exception of the new Will Ferrell and John C Reilly movie. Critics are right to warn us of that mess because it looks truly awful.