Is it really a surprise? I mean, wasn't the movie just an extended version of the show? I don't know why it would seem odd that it would be more of the same junk.
That doesn't excuse writing poor reviews. If he doesn't have the time to do it right, he just shouldn't do them. Honestly, I was surprised to find a review of the movie here. I would have guessed the fan bases of the Escapist and Entourage don't overlap much.Spot1990 said:Marter's the Escapist's resident film critic, cranking out a lot more reviews a week than Bob ever did (probably easier when he doesn't have to make a video for them).
Bias is bad, but liking the series does not make one biased. Do you honestly think everyone who enjoyed The Fellowship of the Ring is somehow too biased to review The Two Towers?Spot1990 said:Besides, liking the show would make the review biased, and we all know how horrible bias is is.
A major difference between this movie and the things you mention is things like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings both tell the complete story start to finish. So do comic book movies. Even Serenity, which you mention below, only had thirteen episodes of backstory, and Joss Whedon explicitly stated he assumed no one had seen the TV series when he made the movie. The closest comparison I can think of it Star Trek Generations. I wouldn't recommend anyone go see that who hadn't at least seen a few episodes of The Next Generation. Film-goers would be wondering why that Data guy doesn't understand humor and what happened to Worf to mess up his forehead.Spot1990 said:Seriously though, reviewers review adaptations all the time without being familiar with the source material. You think half the old guard have ever picked up a comic book before? How many critics do you think read the Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings?
Given that I'm not a writer, it is quite kind of you to say so. The only reason I bothered to write it is because of how unbelievably poor I felt the original review was. The were multiple factual mistakes almost from the start. The movie is a ensemble piece, so there isn't any sort of a "lead actor" in this any more than there was in something like "Friends". If I was forced at gunpoint to pick one, I would have at least gone with Kevin Connolly's character Eric (actually the character is commonly referred to as E), given that he was actually given top billing in the opening sequence. The claim that the main characters go around making racist, sexist, or homophobic statements is simply untrue (only the character of Ari was ever known for making sexist or homophobic statements, but never anything racist - again, research would have helped here - and it was very toned down, for reasoned explained in the movie). Finally, claims that none of the actors can act I can't describe as anything other than complete bullshit. Jeremy Piven, Kevin Dillon, and Kevin Connolly were either nominated for or won awards for acting during its HBO run, including Emmys and Golden Globes. Heck, two of the main characters go by E and Drama, not Eric and Johnny! To me, the entire thing reads like the reviewer watched the first five minutes of it, left, and then wrote the article based on whatever information he could find on Wikipedia and the Internet.Spot1990 said:Good job on actually providing a fan's perspective though. Hopefully anyone who likes the show can take something from your summation. But for people like me, who aren't fans of the show this review is pretty relevant. Doesn't look like the movie would win me over.
Marter isn't wrong in the title. Entourage, even as a show, was a shallow dudebro extravaganza (with the exceptions of Ari and Lloyd and to an extent Johnny Drama). Critics were bound to hate the hell out of it.Excludos said:This is one weird movie. I haven't seen it yet, but it grabs scores from 1 to full 10s. Most of the movie critics seems to hate it, while most normal audience seems to dig it (example: rotten tomatoes rates it 30% from critics and 84% from audience). Can't help but wonder if this is one of those "it's a completely ok movie but critics are too snobby to like it" type of movies.
Will have to watch it before I can know for sure, but I dig the hell out of the series though, so I'm pretty biased already.
Well, the reason you're going to get that is because it's based on an existing TV show, so most of the public who are actually going to pay money to see it are already fans of the show and want more of what they already enjoy; movie critics have to go see it and review it regardless of their feelings towards the show.Excludos said:This is one weird movie. I haven't seen it yet, but it grabs scores from 1 to full 10s. Most of the movie critics seems to hate it, while most normal audience seems to dig it (example: rotten tomatoes rates it 30% from critics and 84% from audience). Can't help but wonder if this is one of those "it's a completely ok movie but critics are too snobby to like it" type of movies.
Will have to watch it before I can know for sure, but I dig the hell out of the series though, so I'm pretty biased already.