It’s a hard job, but… etc., etc.

A.O. Scott in Sunday’s New York Times addressed the old movie-critic question: What does a pretentious intellectual do in a season devoted to movies of the purely escapist genre? His answer: “(E)xcuse me while I turn my attention to Aristotle’s `Posterior Analytics,’ which my colleagues tell me is crucial to understanding `Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.’ ”

OK, I can recognize irony as well as the next person holding a bachelor’s degree from a decent state-supported university . All joking aside, though, Scott makes a good point. Even though summer movies are escapist, we should still hold them to high standards. Only he goes too far. While dismissing mere “pretentious blockbusters” such as “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Hulk” and “The Matrix Reloaded,” Scott wrote that the “obvious point of comparison is the `Lord of the Rings’ cycle, based on the work of an almost pathologically learned Oxford don , which has so far found a perfect equipoise of seriousness and delight.”

Look, on one level he’s right. We need to demand that Hollywood offer us the best kind of film that it can regardless of genre. For every “Dumb and Dumber” there can be a “Young Frankenstein,” for every “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” there can be a “Raiders of the Los Ark,” for every “Bruce Almighty” there can be an “Austin Powers.”

But here’s the thing: If we were to wait until Hollywood made only the best films possible, we’d seldom see any movies (and never anything by Michael Bay) . And for a critic to dismiss outright anything not appropriate for discussion in a graduate school semitocs class is… well, sad. It essentially dooms him to spending a lot of time in the dark hating the very art he has chosen to criticize.

Hey, I love to watch movies. So I choose to criticize those that need it and simply enjoy, if I can, those that are all they mean to be: pure escapism. I refuse to spend my summer hating all but the pretentious adaptations of fantasies written by obscure Oxford dons. But then you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve never even typed the word “equipose” before much less tried to use it to make a point.