The reviews have been wretched. The movie was such a stinker that the studio did not allow screenings until the day before it came out.

Will Smith has become a scientologist, and an ex-Scientologist reviews the film as a sort of BATTLEFIELD EARTH II:


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-scientologist-reviews-earth-guest-561310


and


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/earth-as-scientology-propaganda-what-559943

L.A. Connection wrote on Jun 1^st, 2013 at 10:56am:

The reviews have been wretched. The movie was such a stinker that the studio did not allow screenings until the day before it came out.

I wouldn't judge the movie by that; it's sadly become common practice for genre movies.  I strongly suspect that studios actually don't have any idea whether they've made a good movie any more, and I've known critics who actually expressed frustration about this sort of thing when, say, a decent horror movie came out that they would have liked to champion.

The movie itself isn't great, but it's not bad, and a lot of the reviews seem to be so dripping with anti-Shyamalan animus (really misplaced, because he's pretty close to a hired gun here) that they're hard to take seriously.  It's got flaws aplenty, but actually manages them well enough to be reasonably interesting and entertaining.

This isn't a great movie; in fact, it's off-puttingly weird in places.  But I'll see worse this summer, and there were enough bits I liked that I'm glad to have gone.

Jay Seaver wrote on Jun 5^th, 2013 at 11:16pm:

L.A. Connection wrote on Jun 1st, 2013 at 10:56am: The reviews have been wretched. The movie was such a stinker that the studio did not allow screenings until the day before it came out. I wouldn't judge the movie by that; it's sadly become common practice for genre movies.  I strongly suspect that studios actually don't have any idea whether they've made a good movie any more, and I've known critics who actually expressed frustration about this sort of thing when, say, a decent horror movie came out that they would have liked to champion.

That's a common misnomer amongst certain critics. The number of instances in which a genuinely widely admired film ISN'T reviewed in advance is pretty small. Pretty DAMN small. Despite a spotty good notice here and there, AFTER EARTH stands at 12% positive overall and a whopping 11% with Top Critics. So, again, the studio did the "right" thing as far as hiding their film from what they knew would be a critical onslaught.

Put it this way. If your budget for seeing movies is tight, avoid seeing movies that AREN'T reviewed in advance. You will beat the market almost all the time. (Also, skip just about every movie released in January and February*).

* - That does not count films up for Oscar consideration which, technically, are December releases. January and February are actually GREAT months to catch up with films that opened only for Oscar consideration the month before. I'm only counting those films first shown in Jan. & Feb..

"Not at all" may be rare, but "very late, only at junkets, or only in certain markets" seems to be fairly common.  Hiding a movie like that correlates pretty well with it not being much good, but it's being done often enough that it's not as sure a bet as it used to be.


Anyway, if you're just going to point to After Earth's aggregates, it's not really a discussion worth having, is it?  I enjoyed it well enough for its combination of scale and oddness, though I can pretty clearly see that won't appeal to everybody.  Still, I do think it's kind of sad how many reviews I've read of it seem to start out with "I've hated M. Night Shyamalan since ____" and spend more time idulging that chip on the shoulder rather than actually discussing the merits of this movie individually.

Please list the films that didn't get reviewed in advance that turned out to be widely admired movies in the past few years? (and sorry, getting reviewed in only LA & NYC does count as advance screenings. Those two cites are both the center of the Film Industry AND the Media)

Is that what I said?  I referred to the occasional genre film that some critics thought was being done a disservice (although the specific one I remember getting more support than you'd think for being more or less hidden, Piranha 3-D, was one I didn't much like).  And while, sure, NYC/LA technically counts... come on, what does splitting that hair actually accomplish.

But, ugh, again, who really cares?  Quoting tomatometer percentages or comparing star ratings is not actually interesting.  Picking nits on whether something screened for critics or not isn't actually interesting except as an aside when talking about the movie (or, maybe the business).  It's just single numbers without context.

Did you see/like/dislike/have mixed feelings on/find some detail interesting in After Earth?  Because just saying "11%!" is fairly pointless.

So, we agree then??

I just see this internets meme that "just because a film isn't screened in advance, doesn't mean it probably stinks" quoted all the time - but, with precious few examples (if any).

And, Jay isn't the only one on this site that has repeated the meme. But, I'll take this as meeting half-way.

P.S. PIRANHA 3D did have advance screenings as proven by the wealth of Pre- & On release date reviews (Aug.20,2010), so, it is not a proper example of the un-screened in advance but was still good meme.