I'VE GOT THREE THUMBS UP ALREADY
By Carrington Vanston - March 24, 2004
http://www.carringtonvanston.net/archives/thumbs_up

As I sit here downloading some Rush tunes I don't want (Canadian content laws dictate that I must illegally download one Canadian song for every ten other songs I illegally download) I've been trying to decide which movie to go see. As usual, I'm voyeuristically drawn to online movie reviews posted by my fellow film fans.

Thanks to the atomic space magic of the Internet, there are many chances for you to make your opinion of movies well known. Most movie listing sites let you add your own reviews, as do film discussion sites like Ain't It Trans Fat.

In my endless quest to be That Helpful Guy Who's Good To Know, I'm happy to present: That Helpful Guy Who's Good To Know's Guide To Reviewing Movies On The Internet, or Everything I Learned About Movie Reviews I Learned By Trolling IMDB. As Bill Cosby would say, be careful or you might learn something. Or was it be careful or you might eat pudding? I think both are equally apt.

The first step toward reviewing a movie on the Internet is to see the movie. Clearly, this step is optional. In fact, it would appear to be actively discouraged.

Now that you've seen (or hopefully haven't seen) a movie, give some thought to how you'd summarize your feelings about its direction, story, acting, camera work, and so forth. By "some thought" I mean "no thought." By "no thought" I mean "are you done yet?"

It's important to remember that every movie is either the best movie you've ever seen or the worst movie you've ever seen. Feel free to call it the best or worst movie of all time--or better yet, both!--but only if you're under 14 years old and thus have a keen grasp of what "all time" means.

Ask yourself, aloud, if there was a cute girl or boy in the film? If so, your review should mention the actor and the fact that she or he is attractive. This is called "cinematography." Let your reader know whether or not you'd like to go out with this actor; this is important information that many beginning movie reviewers forget to include. Be specific when you describe the hotness of the actor by varying the number of Os, Ts and exclamation points in "SOOOOO HOTTT!!"

If you did not enjoy the movie, it's important to keep in mind the fact that the director and/or lead actors have wronged you in an intentional and vindictive way. Comment on their characters--not the roles they play, but their persona and individual traits. Leave their acting out of it. This time it's personal.

Be sure to type the word "*SPOILERS*" if you include even the most minor detail about the film, such as its genre or the fact that it exists. In fact, you should include a spoiler warning in all cases aside from when you give away a major plot twist. In such a case, the phrase "As everyone knows" works better as a lead in.

There might be a place to type a subject for you post. Don't be fooled: the "subject" line is used exclusively for the first few words of the post itself. Try your best to ensure this results in a nonsensical and obscure subject, and that snipping these words off the front of your post will make it nigh impossible to wrestle any meaning out of your opening sentence. That's Internet gold!

Before you finish up your review, glance at earlier reviews to see if anyone has disagreed with you in the least way. If so, be sure to draw the world's attention to the fact that the other reviewer is mentally deficient and sexually unequipped. I think you'll find dinkmonkey and assninja are handy catch words.

You'll probably have a chance to rate the film out of five, or ten, or thumbs. There are only two valid choices: the lowest possible rating, or the highest possible rating. Online review sites could save a lot of bandwidth by simply presenting a pop-up menu with 0 and 10 as the only two choices. Pick either the highest or the lowest rating at random.

Now that you've written your review, it's time to spell check it. The simplest way to do that is just to assume that your diction and syntax are perfect. I know, I know: that's a lot more effort than most of you are used to putting into spelling for Internet posts. Baby steps.

Now post your message.

Now post it again. And again. And one more time for good measure. Oh what the heck, post it again.

Now post a new message about how you didn't mean to multiple post. Now post that again, too.

Voila, you're an internet movie reviewer! If you follow these steps you'll be thumbing-up or down with the best of them because this is the best movie reviewing guide of all time!!! And if you disagree with that, you are a re-re assninja.

Carrington Vanston
carrington@carringtonvanston.net

[This article is released to the public domain.]