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For Pete Hammond's Sake!
by Richard Horgan |
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10/17/2006 at 11:06:24 PM |
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Maxim Magazine movie critic Pete Hammond currently sits atop HollywoodBitchslap.com’s CriticWatch for 2006. According to the site, he has upchucked no less than 51 ridiculously effusive endorsements this year for everything from The Shaggy Dog and The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift to Poseidon and Scoop, thus cementing his current #1 "Whore Ranking."
And sure enough, a gander at this past Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Calendar section reveals no less than four banner-headlined movie poster blurbs from Hammond for Employee of the Month, Man of the Year, The Guardian and The Prestige. But the funny thing is that when you actually read Hammond’s short-short reviews for these movies, they are not nearly as Earl Dittman-esque as one might assume. In other words, the exclamation point excess may not entirely be all his fault.
Employee of the Month : “Outrageous good fun.”
Hammond is referring here only to the naturally synced in byplay of comedic leads Dane Cook and Dax Shepard. His overall review is actually much more even-handed, suggesting that the casting of Jessica Simpson ruins the potential of this two-man team (“looks like she’s hired Hilary Duff as her acting coach, pretty much destroying every scene that she’s in”), and that it all eventually falls apart (“a little too homogenized for its own good, becoming more like a very expensive sitcom pilot. Next time get a better script, Dane and Dax.”)
Man of the Year : “Robin Williams turns in his smartest, funniest performance in at least a decade. Man of the Year winds him up, sets him loose and lets him rock!”
Granted, this would seem like a crazy, no-holds barred overstatement. But it is actually the only good thing in Hammond’s review, the “good news” that he gets out of the way first. Like many, he finds the thriller subplot involving Laura Linney’s character to be the movie’s fundamental flaw (“This sinister plotline threatens to ruin all the goodwill set up by Williams and basically torpedoes whatever comic value there was in the first place.”)
The Guardian : “Stirring and exhilarating.”
This appears to be Hammond’s only manufactured quote of the bunch, meaning that a publicist for the film asked him to provide something and he did, beyond the bounds of his review. In his online write-up, he starts of by framing it more as a “surprisingly effective” action film, anchored in part around Ashton Kutcher’s breakthrough acting opportunity (“no, we aren’t punking you,” Hammond adds). But once more, he also catalogs some of the less savory aspects of the flick ("On the downside, the film is overlong at nearly two and a half hours, a soapy subplot between Costner and his long suffering wife is unnecessary, and the last 20 minutes are a little too mythic.”)
The Prestige : “One of the year’s best films! Dazzling! This is moviemaking at its absolute finest.”
This is the only one of Hammond’s “Sunday Calendar quartet" of Maxim reviews that was not yet online at press time, so we can’t delve quite as assiduously beyond the quote. And though Christopher Nolan, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine may indeed justify such praise, we have a feeling there is probably some not so giddy copy in there as well.
The Hollywood studio publicists are as much to blame for Hammond’s ubiquitous presence in movie ads as he is, not to mention the folks at Maxim who, in an apparently calculated move, are determined to remind everyone that you can subscribe to their magazine for the articles. Hammond likely has a typically early print magazine deadline for his stuff, and so it is available early on for the marketing departments to mock up and run with. This and perhaps the fact that the studio PR departments equate putting a Maxim-attributed quote in an ad with their best chance of attracting the highly desirable young Maxim demo into theaters.
When not reviewing movies for Maxim, Hammond writes the occasional Oscar piece for Variety, moderates their awards season L.A. film series and helps run panel events at film festivals (the snaps on this page of Hammond with Heath Ledger and Charlize Theron are from the Santa Barbara Film Festival). Ultimately, he is just a cog in the PR game, and those pulling the strings are often quoting him in a way that is, as Sienna Miller might say, horribly out of context.
Update - 01/05/07: The annual 2006 compilation from eFilmCritic and Erik Childress of the top "Quote Whores of the Year" are out... And guess who sits atop the list?
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