The surge in the usage of Internet and the urge for people to tap stuff on their keyboards and keypads and share them with friends have sprung multi-folds in the last few years. ‘Crowdsourced’ websites have become quite popular. In other websites and magazines, there are specific limited columns which encourage views of visitors/readers. Among the pleasant positives this phenomenon has brought about are a few diabolic downturns. One among those is the increasingly growing clout of the ‘Arm-chair Critic’. As I am going to base this article on this referential ‘abominable’ person, let me be clear in my definition of who it is, in the context of movies and movie-reviewers.

The arm-chair critic who I refer to here is the one:

  • who doesn’t belong to a reputed movie magazine/ movie website but writes stuff on movies without having knowledge of passable thresholds on movie-making technicalities,
  • who doesn’t do more than spending a 100 bucks on movies to comment on and bad-mouth movies as much as he pleases to,
  • who does whatever it takes to use his/her bias towards/against someone part of the movie and use all these to his advantage in getting very many traffic-hits on his page with his early-bird review by mid Friday.
There are quite a few popular reviewers who can fill the shoes of our Mr. Abominable – Some on the Radio, some on youtube channels & some on the web etc.

It is this ‘arm-chair critic’ who presents a disturbing trend, not without the help of the Internet savvy public who popularize & idolize him and send him places. There are quite a few types of such critics who I would want to address:

Type – 1:

I know of a popular show-host who performs (or used to play before being unceremoniously stopped by the invisible hand of the industry) this disgusting role to near-perfection through his audio reviews. Without bothering to name him, let me put my points forward on what I think his intentions are and how he succeeds in them. Going by the reviews he makes, there is not more than 10% in it that contributes to parameters one would have to gauge when one reviews a movie. As an example, in his review of the Vijay starrer Thuppaaki, he devotes about half a minute to describing the accent with which Vijay croons for the Google google number!

For this reason, it is a sin if he is to review and write-off a movie made that follows anything more than 10% technicalities of movie-making (For, the film’s crew have been more perfect in their line of work than our arm-chair critic has been in his profession). His intention is to sell his show to the public, earn fame and laugh his way to the bank in which he has won handsomely but does he care to think of the effort the film’s crew must have put in over a period of a few months? If his justification happens to be “They earn in Crores anyhow”, I would ask him to think again. How about those fringe workers, those assistants who would think of this film being a jump-board for their successes? With your ‘oh-so-humorous’ review, you have contributed your tiny bit in putting to rest their motivation towards making it however big they had wanted to go. It is OK if this is done for really bad films. But the person is notoriously known for giving mockery filled reviews to almost all films made! Duh?!? Give me a break.

He is not alone. There are video reviewers who give him company. They are at their sadistic best coming up with the most caustic of comments appeasing to the fans of a rival actor/ film maker who will also ensure their reviews go viral and in the process, give them mileage and following. What the followers forget is, they use the same technique back with the rival’s film too!

It makes lesser sense when they do it on films that don’t have a cast member with any potential rival star. The case in point is a youtube review of a Tamil/Malayalam bilingual that released earlier this year. The film maker recently had posted the review on his social network page lamenting how difficult it was for him to see elements in his film being made fun of, unfairly.

Type – 2:

The arm-chair critics of this kind appear when films of big actors/directors releases. They would have had the privilege (or should I call it luck?) of watching the film 12 hours ahead of people back home and would flaunt their achievement by posting: 1.updates as and when they watch the film (‘first half racy, second half lacks pace’ sort of inane, nonsensical comments). 2. They would later come back posting a huge review (Here again, going by content, it would follow reviewing etiquettes by not more than 5-10%) giving a beating or two in the most sarcastic of methods! It is OK if the film is really bad and deserves such sort of shoddily treated paraphrasing. But, if it is for films like Enthiran & Vishwaroopam (one knows who would do this for either films!), it spreads virally giving undue accolades to someone who is more close to being a sadist than to being a reviewer.

Type – 3:

These are the funny ones who ought to be ignored completely. They would not have watched the movie at all. They would still go all guns blazing on Twitter & facebook giving reviews filled left, right and centre with spoilers and with comments on the lines: ‘My friend from Singapore says the hero utters so and so dialogue”; “My Uncle from Dubai says the scene before Interval is pure mass” (whatever that term means?!) etc. It is perfectly OK if they are to put all these in a better titled post than one which says ‘Review of so and so movie”.

Type-1 is the most dangerous animal and it has to be dealt with carefully. It is better for people on the Internet to curb unworthy stuff of the Type-1s from going viral on the net. They would do better using their judgment in deciding whether or not to share things on their networks not giving in to any bias that they may have on anyone involved in the movie as every movie is part of a dominos-economics. Your sarcasm hurts; Your biased share hurts; Your sadistic comments hurt – someone, somewhere.

If the intention or the presentation of the film appears noble, let us give the benefit of our doubts to the makers than to the arm-chair critics. If neither the intention nor presentation is satisfactory, well, there is not much wrong in joining the bandwagon of arm-chair critics, for, Saving the industry is, indeed, a priority!