Looking Down And Looking Back

The New Yorker movie column has a flaw common to many upscale periodicals--its stock in trade is a knowingness that comes close to sneering. A review isn't just a review, it's an act that displays the writer's superiority to popular culture, whether he likes the piece in question or not.

This attitude is on full display in Anthony Lane's discussion of Star Trek. He doesn't like it, which is fine--if anything, the movie's been overpraised. But all the smart-aleck comments detract from the review, and, in fact, demonstrate Lane's ignorance.

He thinks Star Trek was fine as a minor TV show, but should have been allowed to expire after its three-year run. This is a perfectly defensible position, but Lane doesn't feel the need to defend it, preferring to insult anyone who disagrees.

Then he gets to director J. J. Abrams

...riding in like Shane to save the threatened franchise. Abrams made his reputation in television, conjuring up “Alias” and “Lost”—another show that began in vigorous style and has shown increasingly little sign of knowing how to stop.

I wonder if Lane has watched a second of Lost. It's remained vigorous, but more important, it's known exactly where it's going from the start and made a deal (while the show was still a hit) to run exactly six seasons and stop.

[Abrams] directed the third “Mission: Impossible,” which had its own distant echo of the small screen...

Ah, a favorite trope of condescending movie critics--the taint of television. I have plenty of problems with Abrams, but I have no doubt if you showed the third MI alongside several other sequels of major franchises to Lane, but didn't tell him who directed which, he couldn't pick out which directors came from TV and which didn't.

Cut to [Kirk's] childhood, in which he trashes a red Corvette (nice work, Jim, getting hold of fossil fuel in the twenty-third century)...

So Lane not only understands movies, he can foresee the future.

I thoroughly approved of his bedding an extraterrestrial female with green skin, eco-sex being all the rage two centuries from now...

This isn't much of a joke no matter what, but given that Star Trek famously deals in beautiful green women, either Lane misses this wink or worse, figures his line is so good he can ignore it.

Making up for Lane's condescension, we have John Lahr's review of Waiting For Godot. I've had my problems with Lahr, but he was literally born to write this. His father, the great clown Bert Lahr, starred in the original Broadway version. His son's review allows him to tell some of the memories related to that production.