On our own

I could offer a review of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which we saw last weekend), but if I learned anything from my time at the student paper when in college, it's this: Composing a cogent response to an artistic effort is far more difficult than it appears. There are many, many people who get paid to do that sort of thing who are better equipped to perform such tasks.

However, there are also those out there who are offering their opinions of movies (and TV shows and albums and books, and virtually anything about which one can have an opinion)—it's called "the internet"—who are, by relative standards, probably even less equipped to be offering their opinions. So why am I refraining?

I like to think over the course of the last couple decades that I have figured out a few things, and one of which is: People who see a trailer and think a movie looks good are not swayed by bad reviews; they'll go anyway. People don't read reviews to see whether a movie is good; people read reviews to see if the reviews jibe with the impression they had from seeing the trailer. It's how to gauge whether the review is good or not.

(I'm not going so far as to say that nobody really cares what others think and that people really care whether what other people think jibes with what they think. Egad, but wouldn't that be cynical?)

Of course, by denying insight into what I thought of the movie, that could be making it more difficult for others to have their thoughts be either reinforced or refuted. They would be left with nothing but the strength of their convictions and their self-esteem to support their thoughts.

(Egad, but that could seem like I'm being an asshole, might it not?)

However, perhaps I have enough confidence in people to believe they can handle this subtle challenge. On the other hand, people may simply think I'm completely full of shit. And the beauty of that: Such a thought is one people would support on their own, without me having to assuage their egos with confirmation that I'm full of shit.

It's their thought, and it doesn't matter whether anyone else agrees or disagrees with it.

Perhaps I've provided them a moment completely absent of the typical external validation. Perhaps I've merely wasted everyone's time.

Either way, would it not only ruin everything if I actually told you what I thought?

Perhaps I have too much respect for the world to do that. Or am I just being an asshole?

(Come now. It easily could be both; those are not mutually exclusive.)

~

However, I should be clear: If I were to offer a review, it definitely would not be a bad one.