Criticwatch

5/23/08 -

Nineteen years ago this week, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade debuted to audiences. Chapter four of the Indiana Jones series opened this Thursday. He may be older but the reviews are still fresh, flirting with an 80% approval rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, currently making it the 4th best reviewed film of the year (minimum of 100 reviews) behind Iron Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Spiderwick Chronicles. (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Counterfeiters have 2007 roots so they haven’t been included.)

Surprisingly enough though, one critic who is on that negative side is none other than quote whore du jour, Peter Travers. The man who liked Charlie Bartlett, 21, and Speed freakin’ Racer is invoking the term of "silliness" to describe Indiana Jones. And he’s not alone.

The reigning Peter Travers Whore of the Year, Shawn Edwards, blasts Indiana Jones as being neither "fun or adventurous." Edwards says, "it’s silly and annoying" and "the worst and most anti-climactic ever in the history of the movies." Shawn, you ignorant slutwhore. You would rather sit through Fool’s Gold ("Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson are this generation’s most engaging on-screen couple") than Crystal Skull? You liked Semi-Pro, Drillbit Taylor AND Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins? Did poor Shawny get denied an interview from Spielberg and Lucas? (And if anyone saw Access Hollywood’s "exclusive" interview from Cannes, more sympathetic I could not be. "Who’s better with the whip?" was one of their questions.) And here I was going to use this space to celebrate the impending two-month anniversary of our movie ads being Shawn Edwards free. He’s been absent since Leatherheads, the culmination of a period from Feb. 8 - Apr. 4 where he amassed 10 quotes with some of the gems listed above. He had 11 going into the summer season in 2007 where he picked up another 9 quotes from May-to-August. Let’s keep the streak going. I don’t know what more to say about these two idiots. Their reviews, as always, are suspect. Talk amongst yourselves.

Meanwhile, speaking of talk - feel free to tune into Nick Digilio’s show this Sunday night (May 25). At Midnight, myself and Collin Souter will be in-studio to discuss all things Indiana Jones and the resurgence of the elder action franchises. Just click below to listen online, go to www.wgnradio.com or tune into 720 AM in Chicago for what should be an entertaining and informative discussion. Maybe Travers and Edwards can call in.

Film Title: The Ruins
Released by: Paramount
Tomatometer: 36% (as of Apr. 5, 2008)

The Ruins is the 12th film this year that the studios withheld from the press in 2008. The other ten are: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Meet the Spartans, Rambo, The Eye, Strange Wilderness, Step Up 2 the Streets, Witless Protection, Doomsday, Shutter, Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns and Superhero Movie. Chances are if you were invited, it was to a 10 PM screening on Thursday night. While reviews haven’t been stellar, Paramount/Dreamworks may have dropped the ball on letting critics see this. Oh wait, they did let a few. At least horror sites Bloody-Disgusting and Shocktilyoudrop got previews early enough to have quotes in the film’s ads as early as this past Tuesday.

"Intense, Disturbing, and gut-wrenching." – Brad Miska, Bloody-Disgusting
"A nightmarish spectacle. It’s a true original." – Ryan Rotten, Shocktilyoudrop.com

Granted, The Ruins is hitting 36% currently at Rotten Tomatoes (higher than ANY of the previous 10 non-screened titles this year) - but that’s still only with 25 reviews while Clooney’s Leatherheads is pulling a 54% with 105 reviews. I love a good horror film as much as the next guy, but I tend not to take the advice of the hardcore (and sometimes exclusive) horror geeks. Many believe they have some further insight into the genre they love so much, when mostly it’s just overt enthusiasm in hoping to prop up the films that generally get nothing but scorn from the critics at large. A bad film is still a bad film though and us perceived snooty critics will support horror when it works. (May I remind everyone that Slither got an 84% RT rating - and I recently sent out an e-mail telling colleagues how much I actually enjoyed the straight-to-video Wrong Turn 2.)

The Ruins is ultimately a failure and a disappointment considering how relentless the book was. (What’s the point of rationing stuff if you’re not going to play it out to its dwindling necessity?) It has its moments but Carter Smith was NOT the right director for the project and The Ruins is a story that absolutely depended on a director who could deliver a 90-minute B-picture that would beat the audience into submission once it got going. Never really happens. But that doesn’t mean that the studio should have held the film from us. As colleague Brian Tallerico told me last evening, "A horror film with a 30%+ rating at Rotten Tomatoes gets me excited."

Rambo will probably in the long run win the dubious title of highest critic percentage on non-screened titles for the year, but The Ruins is going to be up there. The studios usually tend to know when they have a crapburger on their hands, but considering they screened First Sunday, Untraceable, Over Her Dead Body, College Road Trip and 10,000 B.C. in enough time for Friday opening reviews (all films that haven’t hit 20% at RT), The Ruins deserved more of a chance than it got. It’s certainly better than the shit set to top the box office for the second straight weekend. And you can double down on that!