Everyone is a Critic
Today, I accidentally happened on the existence of the movie The Darjeeling Limited. I suppose I’m something of a Wes Anderson fan, so I decided to look it up on Cinemaclock and see when it is playing.
Cinemaclock’s ratings come from users. This is a profoundly interesting thing, because the numbers that are attached with the film are granted a different kind of objectivity from the normal work of film critics. For example, it seems that Resident Evil: Extinction is a more highly rated movie than The Darjeeling Limited. In a more general sense, this number reflects the gut response of people who went to see the movie, filtered by the attitudes of the people who are likely to write about it.
The ratings are helpfully broken down by age group and gender, which provides some insight: the best ratings for Resident Evil come from the 13-17 age group, followed by the 18-25, and the reviews sink to a 6.something by the time it reaches the 50+ point. There are also written reviews along with the rating, and more information about the responding demographic can be gleaned from them. The Resident Evil reviews are generally sparsely punctuated and poorly spelled, and glowing for very specific reasons: it has zombies, it’s set in a desert, the lead girl is hot.
Now, Darjeeling has considerably fewer reviewers. The ratings start off in the 8.somethings at 18-25 (no reviews from younger viewers) and fall over the precipice into the 4-5 as soon as we leave the 26-35 range. The reviews here tend to form complete sentences but are still surprisingly short on punctuation. We also see an appearance from that wonderful internet bird, The Consummate Consumer of Culture. This one is unlikely to impress a mate; his word choice is sophomoric and awkward, and demonstrates only an introductory level of connoisseurship. Interestingly, reviews from the older demographic all focussed on issues related to parenting and skimmed over the main plot.
So in terms of what to expect from the Darjeeling Limited, I’m still in the dark (except for the part of the plot revealed by one elderly reviewer talking about parenting; thanks!). Am I more likely to agree with the pretentious 18-25 year old, the Frasier-ish sounding 50+, or the worshipful and agrammatical 26-35? Judging from the nature of the poor reviews from older viewers, it is not a movie for Hermann Hesse fans, nor is it a movie for people who take depictions of bad parenting seriously. The most likely case is that the dramatic shift in reviews is due to a dialectical shift that seems to take place in one’s mid-30s. What I’d be interested in seeing is whether this shift is tied to having children or to some significant generation gap between the boomers and the gen-xers.
Oh, I guess I’m interested in seeing the movie, too.
