You've just paid good money to see a bad film. Who do you blame: the studio who made the movie or the critic who recommended it? In the case of David Manning of the Ridgefield Press, the answer seems to be both. It transpires that this "blurb whore" was a concoction of the Sony Pictures press department, dreamed up to shower praise on below-par produce like A Knight's Tale and The Animal. An American judge has now ruled that punters who visited these films on Manning's say-so can now apply for a refund.
The ruling has fascinating implications. For one, it suggests that a film critic has the power to influence a movie's box office performance, which is something I've always doubted. Secondly, it celebrates the status of the legitimate reviewer by marking them out from illegitimate ones. Again, I'm not sure the distinction is so clear-cut. Yes, Manning might not have actually existed. But are his "reviews" – hailing The Animal as "another winner!" and actor Heath Ledger as "this year's hottest new star!" – really so different from the doggerel that gets peddled on a weekly basis by well-paid writers on some of the world's most widely read publications?
Or to put it another way: why did Sony Pictures feel the need to invent a dumb reviewer to big-up their movies? The woods are full of them already.
