Don't get me wrong: Scott's positive reviews are often very good as well! I used to have all kinds of issues with what came across as a smugness complex, and to the extent he improved, I think I probably grew up. Whatever. The point is that tracking the evolution of Scott's most vicious pans yields a redoubtable consistency. For almost a decade, this man has pushed the envelope of how to creatively trash a film in a voice that's funny, definitive and authoritative. He almost makes you want to view his targets -- almost.
Again, in honor of his excellent recent pan of MacGruber, let's visit AOS-Smackdown Memory Lane (in chronological order):
· Sorority Boys (March 22, 2002)
"Sorority Boys, every bit as clever as its title, is a frat-house cross-dressing comedy: Some Like it Hot and Animal House slammed together and reworked as a Bazooka Joe comic, but with nudity and swearing, and of no use at all in the disposal of chewed gum. To give you an idea of the humor: the sorority where the nerdy misfit women live is called Delta Omega Gamma, which spells dog. Get it? I can't even tell you the Greek letters in the name of the fraternity. [...] Our three heroes, in one of the least convincing feats of cross-dressing ever perpetrated on screen (and if you think back on To Wong Foo, Flawless, and _Bosom Buddies, that's saying something), go undercover as DOG pledges. Dave gets involved in some heavy pseudo-lesbian Tootsie action with Leah, the humorless feminist; Doofer takes a Mrs. Doubtfire turn cleaning house and offering a motherly shoulder; and Adam does, I don't know, Angie Dickinson in Police Woman. Rrrrowf."
· Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (Nov. 21, 2003)
"Under the supervision of Brian Grazer, who was responsible for the monstrous Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas three years ago, and with the permission of Audrey Geisel, the author's widow and the custodian of his posthumous reputation, the first-time director Bo Welch has put together a vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy that Universal has the temerity to call Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. It is nothing of the kind, despite voice-over narration that occasionally tries to imitate the cadences of Seussian verse and sets that sporadically evoke Seuss's antic draftsmanship. [...] I am tempted to say that this Cat should be tied up in a sack and drowned, but I wouldn't want to condone cruelty to animals, even metaphorically. Cruelty to classic works of children's literature is bad enough."
· The Wicker Man (Sept. 2, 2006)
"A movie like this can survive an absurd premise but not incompetent execution. And [director Neil] LaBute, never much of an artist with the camera, proves almost comically inept as a horror-movie technician. He can't even manage an effective false scare, or sustain suspense for more than a beat or two. Nor does the crude, sloppy look of the film turn into cheesy, campy excess. It's neither haunting nor amusing; just boring. [...] I'm trying to imagine how this movie was pitched. There's this island, see, and it's ruled by women. Goddesses! Most of them are blond, and a lot of them are twins, and they have all this honey, and these wild costumes. Porno? What are you talking about? It's a horror movie. Don't you get it?"
· Wild Hogs (Mar. 2, 2007)
"The main thing about these guys -- the main source of the movie's fumbling attempts at humor -- is that they're not gay. Really. Seriously. No way. They may worry about people thinking that they're gay, and they may do things that might make people think that they're gay -- dance, touch one another, take off their clothes, express emotion -- but they're absolutely 100 percent not gay. No no no no no no. No sir, I mean, no ma'am. That's what makes it funny, see. After camping out one night, for example, they have a conversation that's overheard by a highway patrolman (John C. McGinley) who decides, based on his misunderstanding of the perfectly innocent things they're saying, that they must be gay. But the thing is -- get this -- he's the one who's gay! You think he's a stereotypical homophobe, but he turns out to be a homophobic stereotype. It's magic!"
· Good Luck Chuck (Sept. 21, 2007)
"What passes for cleverness is the movie's central conceit: Chuck (that would be [Dane] Cook) suffers under a curse that causes every woman he goes to bed with to fall in love with the next guy who asks her out. When the local ladies find out about this, Chuck gets a lot of action, but then -- after a long, split-screen montage of his priapic exertions -- he starts to feel empty and used. Me too. But if the logic of Good Luck Chuck holds, the next movie I see should be a masterpiece."
· The Love Guru (June 20, 2008)
"The word 'unfunny' surely applies to Mr. Myers's obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, The Love Guru is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again. And this is, come to think of it, something of an achievement. What is the opposite of a belly laugh? An interesting question, in a way, and to hear lines like "I think I just made a happy wee-wee" or "I'm making diarrhea noises in my cup" or to watch apprentice gurus attack one another with urine-soaked mops is to grasp the answer. Please don't misunderstand: I'm not opposed to infantile, regressive, scatological humor. Indeed, I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Or maybe a glutton. So it's not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well."
· Seven Pounds (Dec. 19, 2008)
"So instead of spelling out what happens in Seven Pounds, I'll just pluck a few key words and phrases from my notes, and arrange them in the kind of artful disorder Mr. Muccino seems to favor (feel free to start crying any time): Eggplant parmesan. Printing press. Lung. Bone marrow. Eye transplant. Rosario Dawson. Great Dane. Banana peel. Jellyfish (but you knew that already). Car accident. Congestive heart failure.
"Huh? What the ... ? Hang on. What's he doing? Why? Who does he think he is? Jesus! That last, by the way, is not an exclamation of shock but rather an answer to the preceding question, posed with reference to [Will] Smith."
· Leap Year (Jan. 8, 2010)
"What makes Leap Year so singularly dispiriting is precisely that it is bad without dis
tinction -- so witless, charmless and unimaginative that it can be described as a movie only in a strictly technical sense. [... The lead characters'] initial antagonism might be promising -- hostility is often the catalyst for romantic-comedy bliss -- if either one did or said anything funny, clever, provocative or even slightly memorable. Instead there are exchanges like the following, on the subject of the supposed tradition that gives this movie its title.
"Declan: It's a load of poo.
"Anna: No it isn't. It's romantic.
"Much as one hates to contradict a lady, the gentleman has a point."
· MacGruber (May 22, 2010)
"Good morning, class. Welcome back to 'Advanced Topics in the Ontology of Cinema.' Today's lecture is on MacGruber, a film that poses a philosophical question fundamental to our inquiry here, namely: 'Why does this exist?' [...] The law of diminishing returns is enforced so stringently that the movie succeeds not only in negating its own comedy, but its very being. Thus 'Why does this film exist?' turns out to be a trick question, because as we have conclusively demonstrated here, MacGruber does not, at least within the ontological parameters elaborated by this course, exist at all. Class dismissed."