Quick Thoughts: Movie Critics/In Defense of Armond White
Credit to YouTuber Movie-ing with David for the header image.
Since some of my favorite things in life are writing, reading, pop culture, and writing and reading about pop culture, I started getting in to film criticism. My first impressions of some famous critics are as follows:
Siskel & Ebert: the real OGs. Always a joy to watch/listen to especially when they get into heated disagreements. Although one thing I do find charmingly old-fashioned was Roger Ebert’s insistence that gory horror films were poisoning the minds of the youth. I’m not a huge fan of the horror genre either, but it’s pretty funny to see him talk about campy thrillers like Child’s Play as if they were some incredibly depraved shit he found on Liveleak. Here’s his take that the 1986 film The Hitcher is really about KINKY SEX and GAY SADOMASCHISM which I thought was amusing. Gene Siskel was also sort of an oldschool proto-“male feminist.” By that I mean he was blissfully unaware of today’s gender discourse and probably didn’t even know what the word “misogynistic” meant, but hated seeing women get the short end of the stick because “imagine if it was your mother/sister/wife/aunt who was treated this way?” He claimed, for instance, that the rise of 1980s slasher movies was a reactionary response to the Women’s Lib movement of the 70s.
Also, this clip of Ebert nonchalantly referring to Tom Green’s character in Freddie Got Fingered as an obnoxious r-slur has amazing meme potential.
Pauline Kael: haven’t read a lot from her but she seems interesting.
Rex Reed: all the criticism of him is completely earned. Is he at times incredibly, unnecessarily mean-spirited? Yes. Are some of his reviews as poorly researched as those essays I rushed to submit at 11:59 PM on Google Classroom during high school? Yes. But honestly, I kind of love him as a oldschool bitchy queen figure who doesn’t GAF, like Oscar Wilde or Buddy Cole from Kids in The Hall. I mean, this is the guy who interrupted a review to start beef with the entire Korean Peninsula solely because he dislikes kim chi, so make of him what you will. Also, I’m sorry but him constantly reviewing movies he admits to walking out on halfway, although extremely unprofessional, is kind of a gigachad move.
Armond White: and here’s the part of the post we’ve all been waiting for. White has been dubbed by some as the “Worst Film Critic of All Time”. I am not sure who I would give that title to, however, the most batshit movie review I’ve ever read was from Chris-Chan’s (yes, THAT Chris-Chan) half-brother Cole Smithey, who wrote this unhinged rant about how The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie is actually about PDF files. I say this out of genuine compassion, not snark, but if this review came out in 2024 instead of 2005 I would seriously consider ordering a wellness check on Cole to make sure he didn’t self-immolate in front of the Nickelodeon Hotel or something.
Anyway, back to Armond White.
The reason he’s considered to be the worst of the worst is because he’s very blunt and contrarian. As a 70-year-old black gay Christian who writes for several conservative outlets, he’s relished in being a walking contradiction decades before you could easily make a bag off it via social media. Like political Substacker Richard Hanania, his content might seem at first designed to piss off as many people possible, and yet, he ends up being more right than wrong most of the time. And even if you vehemently disagree with him, the one thing you can’t say is that he’s boring.
Lots of people personally find Armond White’s writing style and overall “cranky old man” schtick to be exhausting, which I understand, especially nowadays online when everyone is in a rush to see who can be the most cynical and negative. Still, most of the hate I’ve seen towards him is because he gave Toy Story 3 a negative review way back in 2010, thus ruining its perfect “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes. Toy Story is a fine franchise, however, I also think it’s overhyped as hell and I say this as an animation fan.
However, after doing a deep-dive of his reviews for the National Review I can say with confidence: Armond White almost never misses.
He was spot-on with his take that it’s a loss for comedy that a side-splitter like Airplane! could never be made today. Not because of its un-PC jokes but because so many actors nowadays, with their stuffy seriousness, wouldn’t be caught dead humbling themselves by getting goofy. Physical comedy, which transcends all cultural, linguistic, and generational boundaries, is the most lindy form of humor of them all.
White’s review of Billy Eichner’s now memoryholed romcom Bros is incredibly based as well:
At a time when the only American who cannot offer a definition of a male homosexual is probably the disingenuous Ketanji Brown Jackson, Apatow, Stoller, and Eichner deal in the deliberate confusion of today’s sexual-equity circus — which derived from Hollywood liberalism as much as from the old Human Rights Campaign, now warped into the leading trans-activism organization.
But the attempt to normalize Eichner by imitating the rom-com formula is what makes Bros bogus. Apatow and Stoller can’t domesticate their unruly pet, but they also lack the honesty to admit that Eichner’s insufferable bachelorhood actually exemplifies his own unevolved sense of entitlement — typical Hollywood narcissism.
More context: The rom-com premise of treating gay males like Norah Ephron clichés narrows gay life to the Buttigieg, Obergefell standard.
What I think gets overlooked in lieu of his movie reviews is White’s music critcism. White clearly has a knowledge and a love for music history, and it shows through his writing. Plus, who else but him could get the National Review reader base, whose exposure to hip-hop is mostly limited to them posting “can’t spell crap without rap” on AOL chatrooms circa 1997, genuinely pumped over a Kanye West album?
In fact, it was him shouting out one of my favorite podcasts The Perfume Nationalist (although he erroneously refers to TPN as a “website,” but I’ll let that slide) while discussing Michael Jackson’s colorblindness anthem “Black or White” that really put Armond on my radar:
Another quirk of his I find funny is how he considers anyone younger than him, rather they’re 23 or 53, a “millennial.” I wonder what will happen when he realizes us zoomers exist.
Overall, Armond White is cool. If you like heterodox culture criticism you might enjoy him a lot more than you’d initially thought.