Stephen Humphries at The Christian Science Monitor has written an article about how Hollywood seems to be taking less notice of critics, especially for films aimed at a section of the audience who don’t typically pay any attention of them: teenagers.
There’s always been some sort of the two-way street between studios and critics. Arguably the critics don’t need much from the studios, they can review a movie when it’s released, but all the little extras add value for their readers and advance press helps boost a film’s profile for the ever-more-important opening weekend. The increase in the number of advertising channels from the relative few of TV, radio and newsprint has also meant that you can reach (indeed go straight to) the audience in more and more ways.
Obviously Hollywood figures this is a good idea when it comes to films that are never going to do well with the critics, saving themself some negative press. It won’t beat the like of Ain’t It Cool News, however, who work with a selection of people who see films at test screenings which are pre-release anyhow (and something the studios would never give up).
For the most part, the movies not prescreened tend to be youth-oriented: Horror films featuring inappropriate uses of chainsaws and slapstick comedies featuring inappropriate uses of that guy from “Napoleon Dynamite.” There have been 12 such movies so far this year, compared with three during the same period last year and two the year before. Some of the films - “The Benchwarmers” ($20 million opening weekend), “Underworld Evolution” ($27 million), and “Madea’s Family Reunion” ($30 million) - scored impressive box-office numbers during opening weekend. Others, such as “Doogal” ($3.6 million) and “Grandma’s Boy” ($3 million) will soon be found next to that dusty DVD of “Battlefield Earth” in video-store bargain bins - probably within a few weeks.
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