SEEING THROUGH THE STARS

Having to give every critical assessment a numerical rating gets a very poor review from our film critic

My friend Kenny likes to rate everything.

“How was your weekend, out of 10?” he will ask. Or, “How’s your meal, out of 10?” At a bar, “How’s your drink, out of 10?”

Always followed by his secondfavourite question, a dubious “Really?” – forcing you to rethink the number you have so carefully chosen to correspond to your painstaking assessment of whatever is being judged. It’s a fun game. What’s not fun is when that game is your job. As a film critic for the past year and a half, and a music critic for a decade and a half before that, I solemnly swear that I hate star ratings. Always have, always will.

It’s all guffaws when you’re trying to crunch your enjoyment of a random everyday experience into its numerical equivalent. It’s a pain in the posterior when you have to rate the latest Twilight film in a way that corresponds to: your entertainment level in watching the film; your critical reservations in sitting through a Hollywood blockbuster sequel; your diplomatic instincts in trying to assess the film for what is, i.e. in comparison to other teenaimed Hollywood blockbuster fare; you trying to enter the mind of a teenage girl and guess how this movie will play to its target audience, i.e. to not come off as a disgruntled, out-of-touch critic; and so on.

For the record, I copped out and gave Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 a two-tiered review – three stars, or if you’re a fan, four stars. But the next day I felt like a cheat, and vowed never to do it again. It’s a slippery slope; start with two- and soon you’ll have threeand four-tiered reviews: two stars if you’re a grumpy old man; three stars if you’re a robot; four stars if you’re a Twilight fan; five stars if you’re a vampire.

It’s a no-win situation. Take the opposite example. Last year I saw a film I very much enjoyed, an arty outing by Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami called Certified Copy. It’s a talk-heavy reverie in which French actress Juliette Binoche and British opera singer William Shimell play a mysterious couple wandering around Tuscany discussing art, life and a relationship they may or may not be having or have had. Binoche won Best Actress at Cannes for her role.

I gave it four stars, while cautioning readers that it wasn’t for everyone, specifying that “the meandering narrative and slippery dialogue may become tedious to some.”

I should have saved my breath. All people took from my review, apparently, was the four-star rating attached to it. The following week, I received several emails from readers who were bored to tears. Even a friend’s mom – who is rather hip and cultured – gave me grief.

So what happened? Why did they not stop and think, ‘Hmm, I don’t really like art films, abstract storylines and too much chatter – maybe this movie isn’t for me?” Did they stop reading before they got to that part? Did they read my review at all, or did they just think, “Wow! Four stars! Sign me up!”

And that is the problem with star ratings: they’re reductive. I can pull out all the 25-cent words and highfalutin film theory I want over the course of a review – people want the numbers. Heck, I might as well use the old Siskel & Ebert system – thumbs up or thumbs down.

Star ratings are also inaccurate. Earlier this year, I saw The Avengers, which I kind of liked and everybody loved. So was it a three-star film, or three-and-ahalf ? I don’t know – Robert Downey Jr., was funny and Mark Ruffalo brought bruised humanity to the Hulk; but Scarlett Johansson was terrible and the CGI fight sequences failed to even remotely quicken my pulse; Thor was cool. I gave it three.

I gave The Dark Knight Rises four stars for its epic scope, its all-encompassing darkness and Anne Hathaway’s vivacious portrayal of Catwoman; but I did wonder how much weight to give the melodramatic subplot of Batman held captive in a cave and the standard superhero movie climax.

Almost every review I write has me hemming and hawing about a half-star difference. In my music days, I would wonder, “Is that a three-and-a-half-star album? Or a four?”

I would call my editor after reviews were handed in and ask him to nudge a review up or down a half-star, accordingly. Once I even called him up to change it back to the original rating. This is the stuff that would keep me up at night. And still does. (Though I no longer call my editor – you’re welcome, Basem.)

To make matters worse, ratings systems are inconsistent. The Globe and Mail and other papers rate films on a four-star scale – which messes everything up! Three stars out of four is equal to 7.5 out of 10. Three stars out of five is a 6 on 10.

Then you have your smart publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker, which don’t do star ratings. So you actually have to read their reviews – what a concept. It’s all for naught, however, as their carefully laid-out arguments are reduced to a numerical equivalent (as determined by some pimple-faced numbercrunching lackey) by critical-aggregate websites Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.

Star ratings for films emerged shortly after the first film stars, according to a 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal, which traced the possible first instance to a one-star (out of three) review of The Port of Missing Girls in the New York Daily News on July 31, 1928.

But star ratings remained rare, the WSJ explained, until French film mag Cahiers du cinéma began polling critics in the 1950s, and assigning numbers to their opinions. Now they’re everywhere.

The Los Angeles times recently caused a ruckus when it stopped issuing star ratings for its restaurant reviews, as Gazette Fine Dining Critic Lesley Chesterman reported in a staunch defence of the star system, back in March.

“I appreciate a good star rating because it tells you exactly where the critic places the restaurant in the hierarchy of the scene,” she wrote.

And that is the appeal. In the Twitter era more than ever, people want snappy, and they want snap judgments. When I’m having trouble assigning a star rating to a film, I try to think of Kenny, or of what I would tell any friend asking me about a movie.

Would I say, “It’s amazing, you have to see it”? Would I opt for a more reserved, “Yeah, it’s pretty good”; a middling, “good”; or a mediocre, “meh?”

That’s as much information as you’ll get from a star rating. For more, you’ll have to hunker down and read the review.

Now seriously, how would you rate this column, out of 10?