Don't Worry Darling and the Critics

Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, and the Internet Movie Data Base, and everywhere else that provides a forum for the broad film audience to offer an opinion about the movies, one is made painfully aware of the culture wars and their effect on people's responses--with, in a reversal of the once normal pattern of critics being less generous in their appraisals than the general audience, the critics often praising very highly films that the broader audience is less enthusiastic about, and some dislike intensely, with the praise and dispraise both bound up with the perceived cultural politics of the film (i.e. its "wokeness"). All this is so much the case that we hear incessantly of "review bombing," and attempts to manage it, with Rotten Tomatoes making it policy to present two scores from the general audience for theatrically released films, one from people who had their ticket purchases confirmed (apparently, by buying them from Fandango) against the wider audience which did not provide such proof--with the "Verified Audience" score out in front, and the user of the site who wants to see the less filtered "All Audience" score having to deliberately seek that out. (First you click to get the pop-up with the fuller range of options, then you have to click on the appropriate button.)

Consider some of the films of recent years where the disparity has been so striking.

The Last Jedi's critics' score was 91 percent--but the general audience gave the movie a mere 42 percent, an astonishing 49 percent gap.

Ocean's 8 got a 68 percent score from the critics--and a 45 percent score from audiences.

Jordan Peele's Us got a 93 percent score from the critics--and a 60 percent score from audiences.

Captain Marvel's critics' score was 79 percent--as against a general audience score of 45 percent.

Wonder Woman 1984 (a complex case for many reasons) got a 58 percent score from the critics (and 71 percent from the "Top Critics") as against the 40 percent All Audience score.

Turning Red's score was an excellent 95 percent among the critics--as against a general audience score of 71 percent.

And so forth.

Interestingly Don't Worry Darling was the opposite case--a "woke" film that critics trashed while the audience treated it much more favorably--the critics generally giving it a 38 percent score, the Top Critics a worse 24 percent score, against a 75 percent Verified Audience and a 69 percent All Audience score.

Why has Don't Worry Darling been such an exception? One possible explanation is that, as many of the less kind reviews suggest, those who hoped for a bitingly critical film came away feeling they were not given what they promised. Another is that, in light of the poor buzz (some of it very stupid indeed, as with the Seinfeld episode-come-to-life that is "Spitgate") the critics had some leeway to be critical--the more in as there had been so many movies recently that they regarded themselves as obliged to praise, leaving the critics eager to indulge what (allegedly) remains of their (ever feebler) critical faculties.