Why doesn't The Ticket employ children to write reviews of children's films? Grown-up reviewer Donald Clarkewill tell you why.
OVER the past year The Irish Times letters page has marked successive school holidays by publishing one of the avalanche of missives that arrive monthly from small children asking why adults (often me) are commissioned to review young people's films. Appalled that, say, Alan the Armadillo IV has received only one of the five stars it deserves, the youthful correspondent urges the editor of this paper to follow the example set by the sitcom Doogie Howser MD and replace the decrepit functionary with one who is yet to pass through puberty. After all, the minors suggest, only children can properly anticipate what other children will enjoy.
The recent correspondence from Fiona Murphy, a seven-year-old reader from Glenageary, Co Dublin, is fairly typical. Fiona's succinct letter, which propelled the budding pundit onto national radio and inspired a characteristically droll column in this paper by Frank McNally, revealed its author to be outraged at Michael Dwyer's negative review of Night at the Museum. As ever with such letters, the argument hinged more upon the critic's rating than the actual substance of the review. Michael felt that the Ben Stiller fantasy warranted one star. Fiona would have granted it three or four.
Consider for a moment what we mean by a children's film. Night at the Museum, in which dinosaur skeletons, stuffed animals and wax dummies come alive after dark, features such mainstream stars as Stiller and Ricky Gervais. On its opening weekend in the US it took over $42 million and has since topped the box office charts in this country. Shawn Levy, the director of the film, did not cast the star of The Office in order to appeal to kids and would surely acknowledge that you do not sell that amount of tickets to an audience composed exclusively - or even mostly - of children.
No, like other recent pictures such as Shrek, Toy Story and Wallace and Gromit (all ecstatically reviewed by adults in these pages), Night at the Museum is aimed at viewers of all ages. In truth the notion of the exclusive kids' film - like the exclusive woman's film, gay film or African-American film - is an inherently patronising one. It is a very rare picture indeed that can only be enjoyed by one distinct section of the cinema-going public. I bow to nobody in my devotion to SpongeBob SquarePants and said as much in my review of the aquatic optimist's excellent first film.
If the system proposed by Fiona had been put into place at the New Yorker magazine in the last century, then, one imagines, Pauline Kael, the era's greatest critic, would have been asked to step aside to allow a nine-year-old to review ET. Earlier still, children might have been brought in to pass judgment on Bambi, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. It is, of course, possible that the editor's infant niece (or whoever) might write as cogently as his best reviewer, but it hardly seems likely.
And here we reach the most sensitive part of the argument. Since the reader may quite reasonably regard this particular reviewer as a pig-ignorant buffoon with no more aptitude for prose than that possessed by the average privet hedge, it might be best to imagine this debate taking place around some imaginary publication whose film critics know the history of cinema, have some understanding of the mechanics of the medium and can string together grammatically sound sentences of modest elegance.
Should the cinema editor of the Hypothetical Gazette, when considering which writer to send to the latest Pixar film, disregard the importance of these qualifications and summon the nearest primary school student? Would his counterpart in the sports department employ children? Does his mate at the political desk dispatch infants to Dáil Éireann? It may be - indeed, I am sure it is the case - that some children possess the aptitudes listed above. If so, it is those gifts, rather than the accident of their age, that should advance the relevant youngsters into film journalism.
Sadly, many publications - unlike the redoubtable Gazette - do not see film reviewing as an occupation requiring any particular knowledge or talent: "That fellow who does the bird-watching column goes to the pictures once in a while. Why don't we give him a bash?" Such is often the attitude.
Cinema reviews are increasingly treated as little more than buyers' guides. Adorned with handy star ratings, the brief film notices in many papers could sit comfortably beside the ubiquitous assessments of luxury handbags in the bulging consumer sections. Assessing what sort of person might like what sort of film is, of course, one of the duties of the film critic, but reviewers should also, where space allows, make some attempt to consider social or historical contexts.
They should ponder the director's way with cinematic grammar. And, perhaps most importantly, they should seek to create a piece of prose that has some value in itself. Otherwise, the paper may as well just carry a photo of our thumbs, either joyously aloft or, if the film fails to satisfy, directed solemnly earthwards.
Fiona Murphy's contribution - and those of the other two young film fans published in the letters page recently - should serve to remind critics of their duty to consider the interests of a film's principal target audience. Ultimately it is the readers who pay for our beer and underwear. But there is more to the job than identifying which demographic Alan the Armadillo and his chums will best entertain.
