I understand the anger. I understand the frustration. A week after Brie Larson criticized white male critics, "Ocean's 8" stars Mindy Kaling and Cate Blanchett are hinting that reviews for their film would have been more positive if more women were film critics.
Kaling stated that the white male critic hierarchy is “unfair”, going on to say “if I had to base my career on what white men wanted I would be very unsuccessful, so there is obviously an audience out there who want to watch things like ["Ocean’s 8"], what I work on, what Sarah [Paulson] works on.
“And the thing about so much of what this movie is, I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they don’t understand it, because they come at it at a different point of view, and they’re so powerful, Rotten Tomatoes.”
Blanchett, whom I hugely respect as an actress, added that: “The conversation has to change, and the media has a huge responsibility.” Blanchett has always been more subtle with her criticisms, and her words seem to have been chosen very carefully here.
"Ocean's 8" is an OK movie. It's dispensable entertainment, but a fine time at the movies for what it essentially is: A heist film with an irresistible performance courtesy of Anne Hathaway. It has made $79,175,170 two weeks since its release, not too shabby and with demos showing that primarily female audience bought tickets to see it, so, in essence, the film has become a "woman's picture" and has had its stars rally around that.
Something to really ponder; Paul Feig's "Ghostbusters" reboot was rated 74% fresh, a generous rating given the film's lackluster quality.
Buzzfeed's Alison Willmore disagrees with Blanchett and Kaling:
I understand Larson's thinking here, and, yes, "Wrinkle In Time" did garner a 40% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and, again, yes, most of the critics that reviewed it was in fact older, white male critics and not POC female critics. Her statement basically reads as an indictment of the unfairness and overall unreliability that she sees in today's film criticism, because, well, according to her at least, some movies were "made for" a specific demographic that is just not represented in today's world of film criticism.
However, objective evaluation should have NOTHING to do with identity politics, but that's what Brie is essentially mixing in here. An indisputably great film shouldn't necessarily be "made for" any particular demographic. Great art should be universal.
It’s interesting how she says that "A Wrinkle in Time" “wasn’t made” for a reviewer, specifically because of his skin color. I mean, I don’t care where you fall on the political spectrum, but that comes off as a genuinely discriminatory thing to say and, given that seemingly everyone who saw it didn't think it was very good, it's probably not the best movie to pick as an example.
And so, with all that being said, I decided to partake in a little experiment. "A Wrinkle in Time" has 70 reviews from female film critics on Rotten Tomatoes. 35 are positive and 35 are negative, that's a 50% score. Despite the female perspective, it is still a "rotten" movie.