I think that they should come up with a new ratings system for movies called “BC”. This would not keep teens out of movies, but specifically invite us to see a movie “BEFORE CRITICS” write up their opinion about a film, and ruin it for everybody.

Because the critics who review movies probably don’t find the same things funny that high school students find funny. And they want everything to have some hidden English elective film class meaning, while we just want to laugh.

On the first evening of Spring Break, I went to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The great thing about it is that you can see truly famous actors in person, introducing their latest films to the world for the very first time. And you can hear them talk about the movie and see it and form your own opinion BEFORE CRITICS dissuade you from watching the thing.

The price of this experience being four times the cost of a regular movie ticket, I could only choose one film to see. So, I went for comic genius Ricky Gervais’ premiere of his new film “Special Correspondents”.  Truth be told, Gervais was my first favorite movie star, since watching him seven times in Kindergarten as the snooty museum director in “Night at the Museum”.  I still run around the house yelling  “Parents control your YOUNG!”

He’s a funny guy and the first thing that happened at his movie premiere was funny.

The lights dimmed, a hush fell over the eager audience, the opening credits rolled and… we couldn’t hear a darned thing. Sound problems in the auditorium engulfed the film in an unintelligible garble.

I felt right at home … my high school auditorium, which happens to be across the street, has the same junky sound system as the community college that was hosting the film festival.

The projectionist paused the screening and scrambled for an audio fix, Gervais made an unscheduled appearance from backstage. A sea of recording Iphones popped up as he ad libbed in mock disbelief: “I’m so sorry for this. I mean, is this a cinema? It is a cinema, isn’t it? This isn’t like a school---am I on a frigging stage in school ?” 

“Special Correspondents” is about two radio journalists who lost their plane tickets and passports on their way to cover a war in Ecuador. They are sure the next thing they will lose is their jobs if they don’t pretend to cover the war. So they set up a makeshift recording studio in the upstairs room at an Ecuadorian restaurant in New York. Complete with computer generated war sound effects, they pull it off.

I really  laughed at that… substituting an Ecuadorian restaurant for going to Ecuador sounded like the dopey kind of thing somebody’s parents would do when you really wanted them to pay for the summer study abroad program.

The Tribeca audience loved the film and laughter bounced all around the poor audio auditorium.

Which is why I was gobsmacked, as the Ricky's peeps say, when I read the intensely negative critical reviews!

‘ILL CONCEIVED SATIRE MARKS A CAREER LOW FOR WRITER-DIRECTOR-STAR RICKY GERVAIS’ , from the Hollywood Reporter.
“Gervais offers up a plot as contrived as his toothy “savage grin”.
“Gervais to drop one of his biggest bad-taste bombs yet,” from Screen Daily.
Worst of all… just one tomato from Rotten Tomatoes!

Were we watching the same film?

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the viewer response to the film and the critics’. I offer two explanations:

First, I believe the press gets behind Gervais’ acerbic wit when it is directed toward celebrities, and corporate America. But there is a “dish it out but can’t take it” quality to the American media and they simply don’t like a movie that seems to criticize them.

Ironically, after the movie, Gervais was asked by a journalist if he was  making a statement about the lack of authenticity in the American press. He assured her that the media connection was just a backdrop for the story. He said his true message is that people are getting too desperate for fame and that the line between famous and infamous has been erased, “People will display an open sore just to get media attention:”

It appears that Gervais wasn’t out to complain about the press, afterall. Nor was he out to produce an American classic about the role of the media and society. He just wanted to make people laugh. Though that is quite enough for the likes of me, a worn out student taking a break for a week, and enough for the Friday night goodtime audience at the Tribeca Film Festival, the press needed this movie to be something more than it is intended to be. Which is the other reason they panned it.

For example, from “Screen Daily”:  “Denuded of gravitas and serious geopolitical content, Special Correspondents attempts to deconstruct such war correspondent classics as Under Fire, The Killing Fields, and Salvador.”
And from the “Hollywood Reporter”: “To say this lampoon of the current political and media landscape doesn't reach the mountainous heights of Dr. Strangelove or Network is to presume it even makes it to base camp.”

Surely, they jest.

Check out “Special Correspondents” on Netflix and let me know what YOU think.