Bad Stuff = Good Reviews

by Jared

May 5, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Tagged: , ,

Back in undergrad, my friend Mark turned me on to this computer game magazine called PC Accelerator. Throughout its short life, I read it religiously, even though I didn’t play any computer games. See, PCXL (as it was called) was written with a lot more humor than other game magazines. So you only needed to know enough about the games to get the jokes. And the best content they produced was negative reviews.

I don’t know about you, but I greatly enjoy humorous negative reviews of anything and everything. An example I came across today is Roger Ebert’s 2-star review of X-Men 4: Not Quite Last Stand: Origins: Wolverine. It includes this gem:

Their story starts in “1840 — the Northwest Territories of Canada,” a neat trick, since Canada was formed in 1867, and its Northwest Territories in 1870. But you didn’t come here for a history lesson. Or maybe you did, if you need to know that Logan and Victor became Americans (still before they could be Canadians)…

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  1. Don

    on May 5, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    I agree that negative reviews, especially Ebert’s, can be great entertainment.

    Take his review of Fast & Furious.

    “Fast & Furious” is exactly and precisely what you’d expect. Nothing more, unfortunately. You get your cars that are fast and your characters that are furious. You should. They know how to make these movies by now. Producer Neil Moritz is on his fourth, and director Justin Lin on his second. Vin Diesel and other major actors are back from “The Fast and the Furious” (2001). All they left behind were two definite articles.
    …
    After three earlier movies in the series, which have been transmuted into video games, why do we need a fourth one? Oh. I just answered my own question.

  2. Don

    on May 5, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    My letter to Mr. Ebert:

    In your review of “X-Men Origins”, you say that ‘their story starts in “1840 — the Northwest Territories of Canada,” a neat trick, since Canada was formed in 1867, and its Northwest Territories in 1870.’ Certainly there were no Northwest Territories in 1840, but there’s nothing incorrect about referring to Canada in 1840. The current federation of Canada was formed in 1867, but there were people called Canadians and places called Canada well before then. The U.S. Articles of Confederation refer to Canada by name, for example.

  3. Kyla

    on May 5, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    Zero-Punctuation is the place to go for hilarious game reviews. I don’t even know what he’s talking about and it’s funny.

  4. Jack

    on May 5, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    Word!