Hooking for Hype: Quote Whores and Fake Reviewers

Article posted Mon Apr 26 13:45:29 2004

What’s good and what’s bad?

Who am I, as a critic and reviewer, to suggest what to spend your hard-earned eight bucks on? To a large extent, critics must rely on their credibility; those who know little about films or have simply bad taste should be avoided.

But what’s with the print ads for a films that feature glowing blurbs from reviewers across the country who seem to love everything? In the trade these folks are known as “quote whores,” those who don’t mind misleading readers as they gush lovingly about the worst dreck ever put on film.

As an example, critical failures and box office duds such as The Legend of Bagger Vance and Pay it Forward garnered abysmal reviews among the most of the best-known (and most credible) film reviewers. Yet in full page ads in the November 3, 2000, New York Times, both films managed to cull enough quotes from various reviewers to fill their ads with glowing praise. Also in that edition, a review of Charlie’s Angels by A.O. Scott questioned the filmmaker’s competence, said the copious fight scenes were “carelessly edited and ploddingly staged,” and called the whole film “trash.” Yet don’t fear, angels: a double-page, full color ad for the film on the previous two pages had eight blurbs telling moviegoers what a gem the film is.

Certainly, reviewers may have legitimately different takes on films (and that’s their defense, that it’s ultimately subjective opinion). And arts reviewers should be applauded for bucking the popular opinion and telling it as they see it. But when they shill over and over for movies that are simply bad (or seem incapable of writing a negative review), it becomes clear what their agenda is. As Washington Post critic Desson Howe points out, “This country is overpopulated with helium-filled movie critics who like anything.” Newsweek’s John Horn explains: “Reading the glowing newspaper-ad recommendations for even the lamest movie, you might wonder if those quoted critics are real.…Many are habitues of the junket circuit, an all-expenses-paid gravy train where the studios give journalists free rooms and meals at posh hotels and the reporters return the favor with puffy celebrity profiles and enthusiastic review blurbs.” The studios walk on thin ice, however: at least ten class-action lawsuits have been filed by moviegoers who were duped into paying to see bad films by biased reviewers.

One group intent on cleaning up the cinematic streets runs http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com. As they say on their Web site: “We at Hollywood Bitchslap and eFilmCritic have taken pride in this corner of our world and have seen it blossom into a national movement. Critics who whore themselves out with fake praise for anything they might get quoted for in movie ads do a giant disservice to moviegoers everywhere, the inductry of film criticism in general, and even the movies themselves. While words like “riveting”, “provocative” and “triumph” are plastered like graffiti every week in film ads, we will continue to expose the quotewhores, who will hopefully be shamed into cleaning up their act.”

In one notable case, the film reviewer himself was a fiction. Sony Pictures created a fictional film reviewer named David Manning to promote their films. Gushing about the film A Knight’s Tale, Manning wrote that the male lead was “this year’s hottest new star,” and that The Animal (a dog of a film by most measures) was “another winner!” The film studio’s deception came to light when Newsweek reporter John Horn challenged Sony about Manning’s authenticity. Sony admitted using “incredibly bad judgment” and promised an investigation. In March 2002, Sony Pictures agreed to pay $325,000 to the state of Connecticut for using the fake reviews. In the fallout from the Manning affair, other studios including 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Artisan Entertainment admitted using employees or actors in television commercials posing as moviegoers.

As New York Times writer Adam Liptak pointed out in a recent article, lawsuits over Sony’s fake reviewer are still flying years later. In January 2004, a three-judge panel of a California appeals court ruled against Sony, “signaling that fake attributions and other falsehoods in advertising can give rise to big damages under California's expansive consumer protection law. It rejected Sony's arguments that the hoax caused no harm and that the First Amendment should protect statements made to promote motion pictures.” An appeal, of course, is pending.

So, in the words of Flavor Flav, "Don’t Believe the Hype! "

(Unless it’s on Radford Reviews.com)