Reviews for rent

Time was when TV-film publicists knew and respected the key difference between press releases and reviews. They did their best, and worst, to “sell” the production they were shilling so that viewers would patronize them in droves—but, they wouldn’t attempt to interfere with or otherwise influence the reviewing process that would kick in after the production started its run.

Less cynical time

Well, that was then, in a less cynical and manipulative time when most publicists knew their limits. These days, the line between subjective publicity and hopefully more objective reviews has been blurred—and sometimes even obliterated. Thus has been born the quirky, smirky phenomenon we can call “reviews for rent”—and even “for sale”!

Tell-tale signs of the co-opted review can be “read” by regularly perusing the output of some TV-film reviewers, and noticing that they consistently favor a certain production company or “stable” of stars over others.

Other reviews are suspect because they’re so completely, absolutely bowled over by the excellence of some productions—even when, after you’ve perused the film or TV show in question, you realize with a sinking feeling that it is merely a sow’s ear unsuccessfully trying to pass itself off as a silk purse.

Other co-opted reviews don’t just stop giddily praising some “sponsoring” producers’ output, but also lash out against the competition, or contrary reviewers who don’t agree with their avid hosannahs and incomiums.

We have been at the receiving end of those vicious counter-thrusts, especially when the star whose performance doesn’t ring our bells is very well-connected.

Their reactive salvos don’t specifically identify us, but generally rail against “sour grapes” and “ivory tower” hermits who are too abstruse and obtuse to be believed.

The now more prevalent plot to discredit objective reviews is also evident in the current industry practice of elevating a star’s friend to the level of perspicacious reviewers when they’re giddily endorsing their BFF’s latest starrer.

This is a bare-faced effort to use the proven power of celebrity to make the general public think that a luminary’s opinion is more deserving of belief and trust than a reviewer’s less sanguine evaluation.

More reprehensible

This practice becomes even more reprehensible when a local reviewer’s opinion is pitted “against” an “international” review. It is sneeringly suggested that the “local” review is inherently inferior to and thus less worthy of trust than the comment from overseas! That’s our deathless “colonial mentality” in full froth and flail, and we can only pray that the more discerning reader and viewer here will refuse to play that hoary game and go down that by now fully discredited cultural cul-de-sac!