Note of Clarification on Movie Critiques | Film Analysis

Many of the articles on this blog will be devoted to film analysis because I am passionate about storytelling. A good movie with a good message will be remembered for years to come. As a writer, I enjoy knowing what to do and what to avoid. To keep this blog ethical, I will not feature downright terrible movies in any post. The point is to critique decent or high-quality films to see if the story follows logically under scrutiny. I will not mindlessly nitpick films because of any two-second errors.

Here is an example of a good critique:

In Monsters Inc, Randall captures Mike in a crate and is fully convinced that he managed to capture Boo instead. How could a monster who has been a scarer for years, the second best even, mistake a monster for a child? Mike Wazowski is wider and larger than Boo. He has a totally different shape. Also, Randall should have decent night vision considering his job is sneaking into kids' rooms at night and scaring them. Since he had to lift the box to put it in the faux canister cart, Randall should know that he captured someone other than Boo. (Remember, Randall said "this kid needs to take off a few pounds," which means that he was not playing dumb.)

The second-best scarer, ladies and gentlemen.

Here is a less-than ideal critique:

At the end of Wall-E, EVE manages to restore the former's memory with an electric shock (equivalent to a kiss). Besides the fact that this is an allusion to a romantic scene where the girl reminds the boy of all the romantic feelings he once had for her with a single kiss, it just would not work. Eve replaced Wall-E's circuit board, which would erase all of his memories. The "glitch" that gave him a personality, and sentience, would be gone.

^This critique is less-than stellar because there are creative explanations for why that happened. Also, this scene does not break the film since it happens at the end. It is just the conclusion of Wall-E and EVE's romantic arc ("the power of romantic love"). Also, technology could have advanced to the point that random-access memory (RAM) exists on worker robots in case of emergencies.

There was a spark!

I still love both of these movies. I consider a movie with flaws that do not break the narrative good. A movie that has so many flaws that they are difficult to ignore is subpar. Visuals and music only get creators so far. A good script will make a great film regardless of the spectacle(s).