At It Again

The critic-hating critic Joe Baltake (aka The Thinking Man's CH) is at it again, this time in spirited defense of the ABBA musical "Mamma Mia!".

"With their noted attention to (easily-manipulated) minutia and with all the subtlety and pettiness of schoolyard bullies, America's diminished and diminishing movie critics have ganged up on this harmless, purely pleasurable film as if they were engaged in a personal fight with something the approximate size of - oh, let's see - the U.S. government.

You know, there's a reason why critics have been traditionally stereotyped as miserable people deserving of their misery."

Because they panned "Mamma Mia!", that's why! Still, Baltake's soft touch towards those unfortunate damned souls known as critics is a breath of fresh air from the invective hurled by the hoi polloi. I stumbled across a movie blog post from several weeks back decrying "the first negative review of 'The Dark Knight'" (from WSJ critic Joe Morgenstern). The responses in the comment section were almost uniformly in favor of beheading, gutting, and dismembering this and any other critical naysayers (often in unsettlingly specific detail); the few comparatively sane commenters merely advocated for mandatory prison rape for the offending critics. For Baltake to simply revel in the imagined misery of dissenting critics rather than concocting a "I Spit On Your Grave"-like revenge fantasy is actually treating these despicable curs with kid gloves. C'mon Joe...shouldn't some wild animal be feasting on the entrails of A.O. Scott? After all, he panned a movie that you enjoyed!