Armond White claims he was kicked off Rotten Tomatoes for Jack And Jill review, is wrong
Armond White has developed a reputation for being intentionally contrarian with his film reviews, writing opinions that deviate wildly from the critical consensus in a calculated bid to get attention. His critiques of much-derided movies like Jack And Jill, for example, have led some to accuse him of behaving like a real-life Internet troll, taking deliberately provocative positions and concocting defenses of seemingly irredeemable movies, based on thematic subtext that only he appears to notice, or psychological insight into their creators that only he seems to have. He says these controversial things, these accusers say, because he’s some kind of self-styled iconoclast (if not just sort of a jerk). Of course, most of Armond White’s fellow critics clearly have problems with his reviews because they all operate from a cowardly, purely Eurocentric viewpoint and also had difficult relationships with their fathers. The ancient Greeks would have understood this right away.
But if you think the Oedipal white man’s ramblings in articles such as, say, “It’s time for Armond White to explain why everyone is wrong about Jack And Jill” have had any effect on White, rest assured that they have not. In a recent interview with SiriusXM’s “Ron And Fez Show” about the typical Internet reaction to his reviews, White dismissed such “sniping and carping and schoolyard meanness” from what he characterizes as “idiots or stupid kids,” wondering aloud whether any of those people have actually bothered to read his reviews, or whether they’re just making snap judgments about him, all based on the tiniest of information. Then he said this ironic thing:
Ron Bennington: A.V. Club actually did this— “It’s Time for Armond White to Explain Why Everyone is Wrong About Jack And Jill.
Armond White: A-ha. I’m glad you bring that up, because that’s all I saw was the headline. I wouldn’t waste my time reading the rest of it, because the headline itself, I thought was stupid. I don’t have to explain why anybody is wrong—that ain’t what I’m interested in. I’m explaining my response to Jack And Jill. I’m not explaining why you’re wrong. I’m explaining how I respond to the movie. That’s all any critic ever does, and it’s kind of sad that in 2011 people still don’t understand that.
Of course, White’s review of Jack And Jill does most of his explaining from a defensive position, saying in the very first sentence that most other critics fail to appreciate Adam Sandler movies because they’re not “dumb fun,” then suggesting that they balk at acknowledging Sandler’s insight into the human condition because of their own personal hang-ups about family and ethnicity. To be fair, White is correct in that he never puts this implicit line in the sand explicitly in terms of “right” and “wrong”—but then, we were pretty tongue-in-cheek about the whole “right” and “wrong” thing anyway. That’s sort of what we do here.