Animation Mentor Student
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “Nothing in this world can be said to be certain, except death and taxes….and Armond White will critically trash a Pixar film.” Ok, I admit I made up that last part. Nevertheless, it does appear to be a constant truth. As I, along with the majority of the film review community foresaw, the hack critic Armond White released a scathing review of Toy Story 3, knocking it from its thrown as a universally celebrated film with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (a popular aggregate film review site) and in turn tarnishing the “perfect trilogy.” The three Toy Story films will never collectively rest at 100% now, regardless of their true quality.
I am not particularly angry at this turn of events, as it cannot actually take anything from the film, but I am merely disappointed and somewhat amused. The internet is a unique place, a place where sensationalism and hyperbole can overwhelm honesty and intellectual conversation. Now I have no idea whether Mr. White actually hates the films that he says he does. I find it difficult to believe he possibly could be so devoid of taste and emotion as to be unmoved by some of the classics he has metaphorically spit upon. It is certainly convenient, however, that his wild statements manage to draw hundreds of comments and thousands of views to the website that hires him, that of the New York Press. This is in contrast to a most common occurrence, where a thoughtful critical review gets overlooked. I can only come to the conclusion that this is the motivation behind the majority of his reviews. He seems to come to the opposite opinion of both other critics and the movie-going public far too often for it to be mere happenstance. Even the widely respected film critic Roger Ebert went out of his way to comment upon White. “I am forced to conclude that White is, as charged, a troll,” writes Ebert, “A smart and knowing one, but a troll.”
I do not like to make a habit of writing “hate-pieces,” as I am fully aware of the fact that what you say or write can come back to bite you. However, I have no hesitations in recommending to the world that, if you ever see an Armond White review, you would be better off not putting any stock in it. To value the opinion of this critic would be to miss out on many classic and treasured films. White is a man who not only paints Toy Story 3 as “consumerist drivel,” but one who despises Up, WALL-E, and every other Pixar film, “outside of Brad Bird’s work.” What does Armond White direct the community to see instead? Why, the critically panned mess of a film Jonah Hex, starring Megan Fox and also opening this weekend. According to White, it “easily overshadows Toy Story 3.” White must have a thing for the actress Fox, because he brings up another of her poorly-received films when referring to Toy Story 3′s plot, making the outrageous claim that “Transformer’s 2 already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence.” The icing on the cake is when he says, “True art is watching hot-chick Megan Fox (as Lilah the hooker) fearlessly staring at the most grotesque side of Jonah’s face as if coming to grips with her own exploitation.” You are as deep as a puddle, Mr. White. Furthermore, the man that called the attrocious Clash of the Titans “a more meaningful, economic narrative than the mess that Peter Jackson made of the interminable, incoherent Lord of the Rings Trilogy,” has the gall to likewise praise the fluff film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry as “a modern classic.” The list goes on and on, and indeed, it requires a list of the two-column sort to truly appreciate Armond White for the troll that he is. So, in honor of this “critic,” here is an amusing collection of his top 50 most inexplicably hated and liked films, in no particular order:
Note: I have seen every one of these so-called “Bad Movies,” so I can firmly attest to their good (and in many cases, outstanding) quality. I cannot, however, attest to the quality of every one of White’s “Good Movies,” as I do not make it a priority to waste my time upon films that are as poor as many of those. Movies I have not seen and cannot therefore personally mark as foul are thus marked in italics and underlined.
| Bad Movies According to White | Good Movies According to White |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | Clash of the Titans (2010) |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | Transformers 2 |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | Jonah Hex |
| A Bug’s Life | Land of the Lost |
| Monsters, Inc. | Dance Flick |
| Finding Nemo | Confessions of a Shopaholic |
| Cars | Death Race |
| WALL-E | Terminator Salvation |
| Up | Chicken Little |
| Toy Story 1 | Next Day Air |
| Toy Story 2 | Bedtime Stories |
| Toy Story 3 | What Happens in Vegas |
| The Dark Knight | Noah’s Ark – Jumping the Broom |
| Gran Torino | Transporter 3 |
| Avatar | War Inc. |
| The Curious Case of Benjamin Button | Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married? |
| Iron Man | Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer |
| Iron Man 2 | The Nanny Diaries |
| Slumdog Millionaire | Reservation Road |
| In Bruges | Norbit |
| I Love You, Man | I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry |
| The Incredible Hulk (2008) | War |
| Sunshine | First Sunday |
| I am Legend | G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra |
| 3:10 to Yuma | Gentlemen Broncos |
| District 9 | The Last Song |
| Public Enemies | Motherhood |
| The Hangover | Never Back Down |
| Star Trek | El Cantante |
| (500) Days of Summer | Lions for Lambs |
| Sherlock Holmes | Irene in Time |
| Watchmen | Chaos Theory |
| Up in the Air | Fanboys |
| Ocean’s Eleven | From Paris with Love |
| Ocean’s Twelve | Swing Vote |
| Ocean’s Thirteen | Dark Matter |
| Inglorious Basterds | Bonneville |
| Hellboy | The Thorn in the Heart |
| Transformers | The Losers |
| Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | La Mission |
| Doubt | Holy Rollers |
| The Wrestler | My Blueberry Nights |
| Knocked Up | CJ7 |
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | The Wedding Directory |
| Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Easy Virtue |
| Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | The Man of My Life |
| Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou |
| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Two in the Wave |
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | The Foot Fist Way |
If my readers still remain unconvinced of Armond White’s ludicrousness, I leave you with one last quote of wisdom from Armond White:
“Does the Wayans family realize that the concept behind Little Man, their latest collective project, makes it a near-classic comedy? Director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his performing brothers Marlon and Shawn are notorious for childish impudence and sarcasm in such hits as Scary Movie and White Chicks. But in Little Man, dealing with their habitual irrepressible immaturity unleashes something poignant. It makes this silly, lightweight film almost deep.”—”Knee High,” NY Press, July 19, 2006.
He has to be a sarcastic critic right? There’s no way that list can be legit. He’s truly mastered the art of trolling.
He might have been accidentally right about Hellboy. I keep giving that movie chances, and it keeps boring me.
Donney – It is difficult to tell. I certainly think he revels in the popularity he gets and certainly exaggerates the goodness or badness of a film; there is no gray with White, only black and white. The scary thing is I think he does believe most of what he says, and just stretches it into hyperbole.
Travis – I can definitely understand that. I didn’t love it by any means. That and Knocked Up were at the bottom of my list to include. But I really wanted to list 50 films that I had actually seen.
I could add that White hates “The Princess and the Frog,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Milk,” “Gone, Baby Gone,” “Precious,” “Hairspray,” “Michael Clayton,” “State of Play,” “Atonement,” and “There will be Blood,” but I haven’t seen those. I wouldn’t feel right arguing for them, though they are probably mostly good as well.
White isn’t always wrong, but you could likely reach his percentage of agreement with the majority (52%) by random chance. At this point, though, I do admit to reading his blasphemy with both bemusement and amusement.
Watched From Paris with Love yesterday. It was a blast! Wax on Wax off LoL Travolta cracks me up.
This article is just a fanboy piece full of bias banal bigotry. So what if Armond White doesn’t like Pixar. So what the 100% legacy of the Toy Story series is tarnished.
Your “Good Movies” “Bad Movies” list is ridiculous. You seem to nit-pick all the bad films to make White look like an idiot. Let’s not forget this guy loves Edgar Wright, Stephen Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze…my point is that White appreciates films that are also critically appreciated.
True, Norbit was bad. The Transporter series is lame. But, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?!?! That movie was brilliant. Just because its at a 50% rating on RT doesn’t mean its a bad film.
Sorry, I don’t watch movies based on a percentage. If a movie is at a 95%+ rating, I might be interested to see what the fuss is about. But I’ve watched movies that had really great reviews and I thought it was bad.
Not sure how banal applies to this article, other than to provide the third word necessary to prove your alliterative prowess. As for bias, certainly I am biased by whether or not I enjoyed the film. That can be avoided by no one, certainly Armond White included. Bigotry, however, hits the nail on the head with the problem I have with White. His irrational reviews seem written for the sole purpose to infuriate and are littered with his own prejudices and animosity.
Yea, I’m a proud Pixar fanboy. But the fact remains that they had to do something right for me to become that way. And if Cars 2 sucks, I’ll be the first to admit and lament it. But to discount the Toy Story films because they rejoice consumerism completely misses the mark for film criticism. I find it funny that in an interview Armond White said there wasn’t a single other critic out there doing it right. Only himself.
As I mentioned, there are certainly exceptions to the good/bad list. I wasn’t crazy about Hellboy and Knocked Up. I pointed out that I hadn’t seen the ones in italics, so The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou might very well be brilliant. I haven’t let the rating dictate whether I saw it or not, I’ve just never seen it.
But come on, when a critic says with a straight face that Clash of the Titans (a bad, bad movie) is superior to The Lord of the Rings (an amazing film with few flaws), there is something wrong. Try not to nitpick at the handful of times White makes a valid point, but look at the broader picture he paints. His reviews are within the realm of being representative of random chance (53% agreement with other critics), when as a critic he should be representative of the tastes of the readership he writes for. And if I find it easier to believe that Armond White is a contrarian than to believe that everyone else is wrong, so be it.
“as a critic he should be representative of the tastes of the readership he writes for”
And he does. For who? For me and others that think seriously about cinema. “Lord of the Rings” and “Inception” are trash films,and so it is “Clash of the Titans”. AW simply thinks that as trash, CotT is better than LOTR. Making your film serious-like does not mean that it is really serious. “Inception” is a proof of that, pseudo-profound genre flick that is fun to watch in the cinema but that should not gather so much acclaim, and should never appear in top ten lists unless the reviewer only has access to the Sy-Fy channel (or whatever the name of that thing is).
Pixar films have lot of problems, the first of which is that people take them as serious films, when they are about toys, bugs, talking cars, etc. Nothing wrong with it, but it is not the second coming. I enjoy them, but I know that they are not masterpieces, that they depend on chases and video-game like visuals (the Incredibles is guilty of this), saccharine and manipulative scenes which would never be accepted in other films (Up, end of TS3) and commercialism (why Barbie and Ken? Why does TS3 exists at all?). Grow up.
I find it interesting that “thinking seriously about cinema” often boils down to hating the majority of cinema. As a sociologist, I am sure you are fully capable of appreciating context and metaphor in films. Thus it is all the more surprising to me that you seem to discount animation as a valid storytelling medium. Movies about toys are not always simply about toys. That talking cars movie is a not-too-subtle homage to small town life and the threat of extinction of that way of life. You know these things, and yet in that passage you sound reminiscent of any number of high school adolescents who swear off animation as kid’s stuff simply because it features characterization and bright inviting colors.
But this is beside the point. When did movies stop becoming entertainment? You say yourself that Inception was fun to watch in cinema. Then how is it “trash?” It has fulfilled it’s purpose in life–the purpose of all film–to entertain. We may quibble over what qualifies as art and what does not, but is everything that’s not really trash? Reading through your own blog (and certainly Armond White’s numerous reviews), it seems to me that your higher level of maturity precludes you from appreciating a large majority of films. If this is what is required in order to think seriously about cinema, then I don’t wanna grow up.
P.S. I know plenty of girls who for some reason don’t like Lord of the Rings. That’s fine (I suppose). But how any individual, serious movie critic or otherwise could honestly compare LoTR to CotT on any grounds and find it inferior is beyond me. I watched CotT for free and wanted my money back. That said, I’m sure there are people who enjoyed it and more power to them. I wouldn’t even criticize Armond White for adoring the numerous questionable films that he does if it wasn’t coupled with the downright rude and unwarranted self-important tone in which he doles out judgment on everything (and everyone) else.
Pablo: You’re so right! We should stick to serious characters for serious roles and silly characters for kids roles. That way, no will have to try! I mean, it will make it easier on actors, directors, animators, and more.
I definitely am with you on this: Lets take all the challenge of portraying serious life issues in a new way. Like for example, in Toy Story 3, instead of doing a broken love relationship between a girl and her stuffed bear, lets do it between a man and a woman!!! Thats new, right?! And heck, we could have people die instead of toys getting broken. Another unique twist.
We should get together sometime and make a movie, Pablo. I’m thinking the plot could be a boy and girl who fall in love, but can’t be together because their families don’t like it, and (spoiler) in the end, they die for their love.
I came up with that myself! Whaddaya say?
I was only peripherally aware of White until recently, when I looked up reviews of The King’s Speech and clicked on White’s because it was one of the only reviews on Rotten Tomatoes that rated the movie as rotten — I was curious. I haven’t seen TKS yet, so I can’t say whether I agree with White, but I found his review analytical and thoughtful. He seems to look at films in terms of how well they are made, rather than how well they did at the box office. Scrolling through the list of White’s other reviews, I realized he was the critic who had panned Precious when everyone else was raving about it. I had been very impressed with his reflections on Precious at the time. I remember liking that he actually explored context and social issues that either are or should be brought up in the film. He is unafraid to address the elephant in the room. Unbelievably (in a field where the insights of most professional reviews are indistinguishable from those written by boring college freshmen), White seems as if he is actually educated in film criticism and well-versed in the history of film. He sounds scholarly in an age where it is almost impossible for me to find an intellectually honest movie review. I notice he’s also panned Black Swan and Knocked Up — good for him. I thought Black Swan pandered to sensational voyeurism, while Knocked Up was a joke and not in a funny way — it was a dorky sentimentalization of misogyny. He saw right through Easy A, the faux-wittiness of which managed to seduce almost all my friends. Finally, a film critic with some integrity AND a brain. I don’t agree with him on all the reviews I have read so far, but I can see where White is coming from. Unlike Hollywood, unlike much of the press, White demands more of films than that they entertain us in some way whilst making money. He respects the potential for thoughtfulness in a film’s audience and attempts to hold Hollywood to some standard other than box-office numbers. He even calls film-makers out when films send a depraved message. Hollywood thinks we are brainless drones who can’t wait to see the latest flicks whose makers put little critical thought into them. White thinks otherwise. Agree with him every time or not, he’s a voice of reason and accountability in an age of Yes-men.
A very well-spoken and thoughtful argument, Mare. I agree with some of the things you are saying, particularly that White is certainly well-educated and knowledgeable of film history. I still hold that he has steered so far clear of being a “yes-man” that he has become the “no-man,” disagreeing for disagreement’s sake (maybe the world needs this, maybe not). He is predictable in his dissent….one seems to just know after seeing a movie trailer whether it is going to be loved or reviled by Armond White. I’d like to see some middle ground from him in his viewpoints, but alas, nearly every criticism is hyperbole from him.
Saying that he respects the potential for thoughtfulness in a film’s audience is certainly one way of looking at it. I can see that. But I can also see how some of his comments can be taken as resent towards those so-called brainwashed audience members who disagree with him.
Finally, amen to the notion that too many professional reviews are indistinguishable from those written by the average student. I cannot stand reviews that only serve as a plot summary, or else contain only one short paragraph saying “I liked it, you should see it.” Rotten Tomatoes is pretty horrible with who is included in the aggregate score as a “critic.” Half of them seem to be nothing more than hobbyist bloggers such as myself.
I think the problem here is that all the internet readers/fanboys who jump aboard the anti-White bandwagon simply reduce his arguments to “good” and “bad” films. White’s arguments and defense of “bad” movies are usually layered and sound. I’ll agree he plays devil’s advocates, but usually to the cause of higher standards of cinematic excellence. He calls the films made as Hollywood marketing product exactly that (he denounced DISTRICT 9 for biting off more than it could chew with the social commentary, which is fair enough) but knows “cinema” when he sees it. This does not mean it is ‘important” or “art house” but rather filmmakers who have an aesthetic and personal vision. His defense of Transformers 2 was simply that Bay made an AMBITIOUS dumb movie – he didn’t say it was a masterpiece but he’d be damned if he didn’t point out the large canvas Bay worked on as he made epic trash. I don’t like the film but begrudingly respected it a hell of a lot more than the first because it had some visual poetry at times. When Criterion put ARMAGEDDON and THE ROCK out because they changed the visual language of mainstream cinema, I was forced to agree that Michael Bay IS a legitimate filmmaker, possibly a pop artist, while fanboys like to have easy contempt for him instead of engaging where he sits in the pantheon of American pop directors.
I’ve never seen White write anything negative about Brad Bird’s Pixar films, unquestionably the ONLY two Pixar films that don’t follow the studio formula (aside from being the two best films the studio’s put out – Ratatouille being the best cg movie ever made). If you read his reviews you get a sense of someone who refuses to validate the popular opinion of commercial cinema, and I for one have been led to more interesting movies following his reviews than by seeing what people like on Rotten Tomatoes. He adores all the recent Coen Brothers films for example, and I can’t argue that INCEPTION is fluff by comparison. The problem is geek culture IS all about defining what’s better – its a big hipster competition to be in on what’s cool before anyone else (look at ComicCon for the definitive enactment of this trend) rather than exploring what’s out there through the subculture.
The problem with being fanboys, especially in the animation world (where we artists and animators seem to have an overall inferiority complex to people working in the “real” movies), is any attack on the safety net of the few studios who make consistently GOOD films (not consistently exceptional films, which arguably has only been Hayao Miyazaki and the late Satoshi Kon over the last two decades) is an attack on the medium itself. Pixar is devolving into product (while Dreamworks really has only ever made product and is easier to dismiss in their overall commercial mediocrity) – the run of films between Finding Nemo through Ratatouille was a studio reaching further and further visually and narratively with each film, but from those great heights of ambition they have simply settled into a comfortable level of solid entertainment that have moments of greatness, but only moments.
Armond White is a cautionary figure to the geek/fanboy/internet mentality – you must be willing to challenge and engage opposing views to truly progress in cinema. His defense of TF2 and JONAH HEX depict less a nostalgic love of the characters but a love of (in TF2) the kinetic momentum on screen (a sound argument, unlike the first TF2 has clear action and better vfx, even though its “plot” is just as stupid – Bay is many things but indifferent to fans and ballsy enough to film on and around the pyramids is not one of them) and (in HEX) humanism – much like Walter Chaw’s recent review of PRIEST these critics aren’t using the lens of fanboy-ism but instead external literature and culture, and what they find sounds interesting enough to warrant giving films I’d dismiss a chance.
I’d say I agree with White 50% of the time at best, but I always learn to appreciate cinema on my own terms through his reviews. He, Walter Chaw and Roger Ebert are the only critics worth a damn if you want to develop a wider palate for cinema, but I’ve found most geeks don’t, they simply want their pretty conventional tastes validated (a la Christopher Nolan making a BATMAN movie). Bird, Miyazaki, Chomet and Sanders (possibly Tom Moore too – time will tell if SECRET OF KELLS is a one off or the beginning of a true filmmaker) are the only feature animation directors truly worth a damn these days – the studios are irrelevant to the discussion at this point.
I used to dismiss Armond White as a troll, as well, and then one day, out of boredom, I sat down and read through a whole bunch of his reviews — not looking for things to attack, but to honestly and open-mindedly try to understand where he was coming from.
What I decided about White is that he is not a troll — or at least, that he’s not a reflexive contrarian who automatically hates anything popular or critically acclaimed. After all, as others have pointed out, he’s an admirer of filmmakers like the Coens and Spike Jonze who aren’t exactly outside the mainstream, and even there he’s willing and able to criticize his own darlings, so it’s a mistake to paint the guy with a broad brush. While I appreciate that you’re trying to make a point with your list, it’s pretty misleading. Sure, if you only include the critically panned films on his “liked” list and popular faves on his “didn’t like” list, White looks like a lunatic. But the truth is much more nuanced.
I think the deal with White is that he’s an academic first and a film reviewer second; however he might experience films as a human being, as a critic he’s totally uninterested in talking about cinema and engaging with films on anything but an intellectual level, as artistic and cultural objects. And on that level, he’s far too consistent to be merely a contrarian.
White’s views clash so often with the popular consensus because he has a pretty clear-cut set of criteria by which he judges films, and adheres mercilessly to those criteria, regardless of whether it’s a tiny indie film or a mega-budget blockbuster, or whether the film is popularly derided or beloved. When you stick to your principles in complete indifference to popular consensus, you’re inevitably going to swim against the current more often than not.
White doesn’t hate what’s popular — he hates films that pander and flatter their audience. It wasn’t so much the consumerism of Toy Story 3 that he derided (he didn’t bother levelling that same charge against Transformers), but the fact that the film’s consumerism is cloaked as nostalgia, that Pixar tries to make us feel virtuous about celebrating consumerism. He also (rightly) condemned The Kids are All Right for pandering to liberal sensibilities by presenting a completely nonthreatening, simplistic portrait of same-sex marriage that allows liberals to feel good about their open-mindedness, without challenging audiences in any way.
Film geeks don’t get Armond White because fanboys are all about championing their favorites. Why should anyone get their undies in a wad because Toy Story 3 doesn’t get a “perfect” Metacritic score? Who cares? But of course fanboys care, because the essence of fanboy mentality is loyalty. I see this all the time in response to game and film reviews — people sending hate mail because a reviewer gave Return of the King a “99″ instead of a perfect “100″ on a meaningless point scale (this actually happened to me).
I think it’s telling that White is accused of being “wrong” on movies, not because his assertions about them don’t hold water, but because his opinion runs contrary to the “right” popular opinion. Even if every other critic and viewer in the world likes a movie and White hates it, he’s only “wrong” about it if the points he makes are invalid or disprovable, and he generally is not wrong in what he says.
He hates nearly all of the movies I love most, but I find his negative reviews fascinating because he provides an alternative way of looking at the film that I might not share, but which I find perceptive and intellectually challenging. His bad reviews of films I like always reveal to me some truth about the film that I missed. Contrast this to other contrarian types like Stephanie Zacharek or David Edelstein, who come off as clods because they rarely, if ever, have any compelling or insightful reasoning behind their negative reviews.
I can’t respect most of the Armond-hate I see out there, because so much of it is so simple-mindedly reflexive. YOU HATE MOVIE I LOVE? I HATE YOU! On the rare occasions where there’s even a genuine attempt at understanding White’s position, those who fail to comprehend his points respond by dismissing them as nonsense.
It’s understandable that someone like White is labeled a troll, since on the surface his views are similar to those of actual trolls. But the real trolls out there are usually unable to articulate any valid argument — they just genuinely get off on reacting against popular opinion, and of course it’s easier to look smart by dismissing something — if you hate everything, you’re rarely wrong. White, though, actually has a case to make about the movies he likes or dislikes, and one might disagree with his views, but first you have to actually engage with his reviews on that level, instead of merely freaking out because he’s crapping all over something you love.
Also, something that no one ever seems to mention in reference to Roger Ebert initially defending White, then retracting his defense and hopping on the “Armond White is a Troll” bandwagon, is that what happened in between the two events is that White publicly dismissed Ebert as a hack.