Off White

I've always liked Armond White. It's not the job of a film critic to reflect the consensus, and White thinks for himself. Some claim he goes against the tide so often he's merely being a contrarian, but I think he believes what he's writing (if, perhaps, he somewhat internalizes the idea of being a maverick).

Still, I regularly disagree with him. And it often strikes me his views are perverse. Lately, he's become notorious as the first major critic to give Toy Story 3 a thumbs down. (For the record, I like all the Toy Story movies.) This led to some suggesting he be banished from the Rotten Tomatoes list, which sort of defeats the purpose.

So I read his review of Toy Story 3, and, I'm sad to say, it's poorly reasoned. One could argue it's not reasoned at all--it's just invective. But I suppose reviews are mostly opinion anyway, so what else would it seem like?

I was pleased to see Paul Brunick did a lengthy takedown of White's review (so I don't have to). As he puts it:

By my count there are about three declarative statements in this entire piece that are not categorically inaccurate. The rest is a seething tissue of factual errors, self-negating examples, glaring elisions, logical inconsistencies, specious industrial analysis, mystifying rhetorical constructions and basic grammatical errors. It speaks for itself.

Brunick gets a little harsh, but I have to wonder if it isn't earned:

What makes Armond's reviews perversely fascinating is that he is so obviously intelligent, yet this intelligence has been harnessed to the warped imperatives of an increasingly frustrated personality. Where your average critical hack job is just banal, White's ability to disconnect the dots exerts a kind of bizarro brilliance. [....] Personally I find White's dependably combative stance emotionally exhausting, but I recognize that the polemic is a rhetorical form like any other, and I read him in the hope of gleaning substantive ideas. Unfortunately, his work has yielded progressively diminishing returns. His TS3 review contains practically nothing (nothing!) in the way of analytical insight or emotional truth. It's little more than a hate letter to humanity—can't say I'm surprised that humanity has been hating him right back.