The reviews are in: Movie critics get mixed notices among fans

LOS ANGELES – Let’s review movie reviews. Millions read them. Actors covet nice ones. Studios scour them for positive nuggets to cram into advertising blurbs.

But how much influence do reviews really have on a movie’s fate?

Virtually none on big action flicks and lowbrow comedies, which can pack in huge crowds despite rotten reviews. Family audiences and horror and sci-fi fans can turn out to see practically anything in their genre, no matter what reviews say.

Critics of critics say professional reviewers have snooty tastes, applying the same criteria to an Eddie Murphy comedy or Vin Diesel bust-‘em-up as they would to a Kurosawa or Fellini film.

The Web has given movie buffs a broad forum to carp about traditional reviewers and post their own opinions, which often reflect more populist tastes than those of professional critics.

This time of year, the award prospects and commercial fortunes of many small films rest with reviewers, whose praise can help them gain a toehold among the holiday box-office behemoths.

Mike Leigh’s abortion drama “Vera Drake,” Alexander Payne’s road-trip tale “Sideways” and David O. Russell’s ensemble comedy “I (Heart) Huckabees” debuted strongly in limited release on the strength of good advance notice from critics.

Reviews were mixed on Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” with many top critics loathing it. But no critic on Earth was going to keep avid Christians out of theaters, along with a more general audience intrigued by the religious firestorm the movie caused. “The Passion” took in $370.3 million, No. 3 on this year’s domestic box-office chart.

This year’s list of top hits is crowded with movies poorly received by critics, among them “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Van Helsing,” “Troy” and “The Village.”

A survey of 2,000 people by three business school researchers found that television ads and recom-

mendations from others were the biggest influences on movie-going habits, each factor cited by about 70 percent of respondents. Professional reviews ran a distant third at 33 percent, while online ratings on such sites as Yahoo and the Internet Movie Database influenced 28 percent.

Sites like Rottentomatoes.com, which compiles reviews from professional critics but also Internet newcomers, have become more valuable to many consumers than the opinions of individual critics, said Chris Dellarocas, one of the researchers who conducted the survey as part of a study on how online reviews can predict a movie’s box-office performance.

“I think there’s a shift away from trusting the experts and more toward trusting the opinions of many,” said Dellarocas, an associate professor of information technology at the University of Maryland.

If today’s audiences are looking more for strength-in-numbers consensus than the voice of individual critics, the Internet still has advantages for reviewers.

Many astute critics have cropped up online who otherwise would not have had a forum. Newspaper critics who once had mainly local followings have found national exposure on the Web.

And sites such as Rotten

tomatoes.com or rival Metacritic.com provide cyber hangouts for film fans interested in reading what critics in general have to say.

“It’s the whole idea of united we stand, divided we fall,” said Paul Lee, marketing manager for Rotten

tomatoes.com. “The Internet allows critics to come together and have collectively a bigger voice.”