When I was much younger, I was completely enchanted by the At The Movies show.  You had the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert reviewing a series of films that were either released or about to be released that week and the chemistry between them was incredible even as it was clear they sometimes were going after each others’ throat.  Yet their conversation was always illuminating and, even if the film was a full on turd, they had wonderful ways of pointing this out.

Back then I thought: What a great way to make a living!  I mean, what could be better than spending your time watching films and then hanging out and conversing with someone about the merits -or lack thereof- of what you just saw?

With the passage of time, I realized that as much as I loved seeing films, the sheer number of films released each week (more seemingly every week), the reality is that being a movie critic is a very harsh job.  For every great film you sit through, there are dozens of mediocre ones and an equal number of absolutely terrible ones that you essentially have to sit through.  As a non-professional, if I don’t want to see the latest Transformers film, I ignore it.  Film critics often don’t have that luxury of choice.

Worse, as you are a “professional” critic, in theory you should go to the latest Adam Sandler film with the same dispassionate neutrality you should carry when going into the latest Steven Spielberg film.

Yet for just about everyone there must come a breaking point, where you’re watching a film so godawfully bad that you cannot stomach watching even one more second and walk out.

Again, as an ordinary individual, you have every right to leave a film half (or less) watched.  But what of professional critics?  For them to have a “legitimate” review of a film, must they see it all the way through?

On the one hand, one might argue they’re being paid to review the film and therefore they should review the whole thing.  There is always the theoretical possibility that the absolutely terrible film you’ve seen for the past thirty to forty-five minutes might redeem itself in the last half.

But, realistically, what are the odds?  Isn’t it far more likely that horrible/dreadful/no-good first half of the film will be followed by at best much of the same?

And that being the case and the reviewer states up front they couldn’t take the film and had to leave it after x-minutes of watching it, doesn’t that also provide an honest opinion of the critic’s views of said film?

Years ago my then girlfriend (who eventually became my wife) and I went to (*gasp*) Blockbuster and rented the film Class Action.  Originally released in 1991, I suspect we rented it as a “new” release at around that time and in the (*gasp*) VHS format.  Here’s the movie’s trailer…

So we popped the film into the VHS player and watched the first twenty or so minutes of it and…we just couldn’t do it.  Despite a good cast and decent direction by Michael Apted (a very active director who was responsible for diverse films such as Agatha, Gorillas in the Mist, Thunderheart, and The World Is Not Enough), this film simply didn’t do anything for us.  We were bored to the point we had to shut the damn thing off.

And yet over at Rotten Tomatoes the film scores a very high 75% positive among critics and a dead mediocre 50% among audiences.

Is it possible I was too impatient and the film built up steam as it went along?  I suppose, though I seriously doubt I’ll go back and verify.

Many, many years later and two days ago I had an eerie sense of deja vu.

I popped the Netflix DVD copy of the 2015 movie Synchronicity into my player and my ex-girlfriend-now-wife settled in to see it.  I was more excited about seeing the film than she was because I’m a sucker for time travel stories and this one, at least as described, sounded interesting.  Here’s the movie’s trailer:

While I admired the visual look of the film -even though the movie’s makers were clearly aping the style of Blade Runner– after approximately thirty minutes I looked at my wife and said: “That’s enough of that.”

To which she said: “Yes, please.”

The film, which concerns scientists attempting (and I guess succeeding) in creating a time travel machine that they had to prove worked by later sending a flower back to themselves (or something) was a muddled, uninteresting watch with characters and situations that were poorly sketched out and at times very confusing.

When we got to that 30 or so minute point, I knew things weren’t going to get much better and shut the film off, just as I had done with Class Action all those years before..

Again, I’m not a professional movie critic though I (obviously) love to write my reviews of films.  I love to see what makes a film or, for that matter, a book or a song, etc. etc. work.  I also find it fascinating to see when things don’t work, to see why it is they don’t work.

In the case of Class Action and Synchronicity, there was little need to stick with the works.  In the minutes I saw of each film I already had a grasp of why they weren’t working and it felt counterproductive to continue seeing something that I knew wouldn’t get better…for me.

I suppose the bottom line is this: Professional (ie paid) critics are human beings just like all of us and on rare occasions they too reach the proverbial end of their rope.  If they choose to write a review of a film they couldn’t see through to its end, I believe that’s not a sin, provided they offer a succinct, clear statement about why they felt said film wasn’t worth watching to its end.

Today, as a reader, you have the option of finding hundreds of other reviews of such material throughout the internet and among those you will surely find other reviews from critics who did see the particular film you’re interested in to its end.

Either way, I cannot fault anyone from reaching a level of annoyance with a film that makes them take the extraordinary step of leaving a film before it ends.

It’s certainly happened to me.