Film critics are out of touch

The argument

This argument holds that film critics are not worth reading because they are out of touch with ordinary audiences: their tastes, priorities and judgements have drifted so far from those of the people who actually watch films that their verdicts are an unreliable guide to enjoyment. The disconnect shows in the persistent gap between critical and popular opinion. Films that critics savage routinely delight mass audiences and make fortunes; films critics adore often leave ordinary viewers cold or unmoved. The reason, the argument holds, is that professional critics watch films in a way nobody else does — hundreds a year, analytically, attuned to technique, homage, subtext and the history of the form — and that specialised lens changes what they value. They come to prize novelty, auteurist ambition and formal cleverness, while growing jaded toward the very qualities most viewers seek: a gripping story, emotional payoff, fun, spectacle, the simple pleasure of a good time at the cinema. What thrills a normal audience can read to a saturated critic as cliché, and what impresses a critic can strike a normal viewer as pretentious or dull. The practical conclusion is that a critic's recommendation does not predict an ordinary person's enjoyment. If the point of reading a review is to decide whether you will like a film, advice from someone whose tastes have diverged so sharply from yours is close to useless — and may steer you wrong, dismissing the films you would love and praising the ones that would bore you. Better to trust word of mouth, audience scores, or your own instincts. From this standpoint, expertise has carried critics away from the audience they ostensibly serve. Because film critics are out of touch with ordinary viewers, this argument holds, they are not worth reading.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The divergence is narrower than the argument claims. Critical and audience scores correlate positively across large samples, and they agree most closely at the extremes, on the best- and worst-reviewed films; the disagreement concentrates in the middle and on franchise entries, which suggests a dispute about one kind of film rather than a general drift in taste. The famous mismatches attract attention precisely because they are exceptions. The argument also assumes reviews exist only to predict individual enjoyment. Criticism describes what a film is attempting, situates it in a tradition and evaluates craft — uses that hold whether or not the reader would have enjoyed the film, and which are the reason to read someone who has watched a great deal. The complaint that critics attend to technique, homage and history is a description of expertise, and the same objection would discredit reviewers of wine, architecture or music. Even where tastes do diverge, the practical conclusion does not follow: a stable difference makes a critic informative once calibrated, since a reviewer who reliably dislikes what you like is a useful instrument rather than a useless one, and the ordinary remedy is to follow critics whose sensibility you have learned. The proposed alternatives have defects of their own — audience scores are subject to organised review campaigns and to self-selection by people who chose the film, and word of mouth reaches you only from those who already watched it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The gap is narrower than claimed: critical and audience scores correlate positively across large samples, agree most closely at the extremes and diverge chiefly in the middle and on franchise entries, so the mismatches are exceptions rather than a general drift. [Rejecting P2] Watching a great deal analytically describes expertise, and the same complaint would discredit reviewers of wine, architecture or music; criticism also describes and situates a film, which is useful independently of predicting enjoyment. [Rejecting P3] A stable divergence in taste makes a critic informative once calibrated rather than useless, while audience scores are subject to organised campaigns and self-selection and word of mouth reaches only those who already watched.