I want my $5. Last week, a settlement was reached in a class- action lawsuit brought against Sony Pictures Entertainment by two California moviegoers upset that the studio had used fabricated quotes from a made-up film critic—a "David Manning" of the Ridgefield Press—in ads for five of their movies released in 2001. Viewers of Vertical Limit, The Animal, Hollow Man, The Patriot and A Knight's Tale were theoretically duped into seeing these films—which could charitably be called mediocre—by glowing notices from "Manning." The pair who initiated the suit claimed "Manning's" fake accolades tricked them into seeing A Knight's Tale, which presumably they did not enjoy.
Sony has reportedly earmarked $1.5 million for payments in the settlement, and anyone who saw any of the five disputed films during their theatrical runs is eligible to receive $5. Since I paid to see the execrable Mel Gibson revolutionary war debacle, The Patriot, even though I don't remember reading any of "Manning's" notices in the paper, I feel entitled to my $5. I see most movies for free these days, and am compensated for my trouble, but $5 would still go a little way toward healing the bruise on my soul that was the experience of seeing The Patriot. (I also saw Hollow Man, but to be honest, I snuck in without paying.)
Whether or not I (or anyone) get my $5 is tangential to the larger question of who actually pays enough attention to a no-name critic from a weekly paper in a small Connecticut town to decide to see a movie based on his recommendation. It's not like Sony faked quotes from The New York Times or Entertainment Weekly, although studios are certainly not beyond manipulating copy from such high-profile sources on a regular basis. The online magazine Gelf runs an occasional feature dissecting blurbs in movie ads, on video packaging and elsewhere in pop culture, showing how studios consistently cherry-pick mixed or even outright negative reviews for comments that seem positive. Seeing the quoted text recontextualized demonstrates just how meaningless it all is. In that way, a quote from the Times' A.O. Scott or EW's Lisa Schwarzbaum is just as meaningless as anything "David Manning" supposedly said.
That's without even counting the infamous case of Earl Dittman of Wireless Magazines, a notorious figure to anyone who pays close attention to movie ads. Dittman is quoted second only to Rolling Stone's Peter Travers and the team of Ebert & Roeper, always heaping overly effusive praise on anything from would-be blockbusters to bargain-basement horror films and quickie comedies. The Toronto Star once ran a piece questioning whether Dittman even existed, but he has since been interviewed in various venues and has defended his glowing reviews of films like Serving Sara, Boat Trip and Maid in Manhattan.
For film buffs, the relative difference between the fake "David Manning," the tasteless Earl Dittman and the more refined A.O. Scott is of great importance, but to the average person it makes little difference. The sad truth is that no one needed fictional praise from a fictional critic to go see the duds Sony is now shelling out money to reimburse them for. What the "Manning" case has shown, more than the studios' willingness to resort to outright lies to promote their products (that's really nothing new), is that the opinions of movie critics are more or less useless to the general public. While dedicated movie fans still play close attention to what their favorite reviewers say, the consumers of bland mainstream fare have no need for critics, real or fake.
All of which means that those of us who make our living reviewing movies, and take that enterprise seriously, have to work harder to show why our reasoned, knowledgeable critiques are worth listening to, lest we all find ourselves replaced with clones of "David Manning" and no one even notices. As far as I'm concerned, that's reason enough for me to demand my $5 payment.
Josh Bell is an entirely nonfictional movie critic. Read more of his takes on pop culture at
http://signalbleed.blogspot.com.