Movie Review Sin 2 - Personal Attacks

Another common mistake committed by Tamil reviewers is criticizing the person associated with a movie and not their work product (this form of attack is called Ad Hominem attacks). Unfortunately, even our professional reviewers are not aware of the difference between criticizing an idea vs. criticizing a person. A number of times, the reviews become a platform for making personal attacks filled with personal bias and hatred.

Why reviewers engage in personal attacks?

The "personal attack" review strategy is followed intentionally to attract reader's negative attention. When an actor or celebrity falls for the trap and responds, the reviewer hits a bonanza as this helps gain publicity overnight, albeit negative, gained at celebrity's expense. In the social media world, many are ready to accept any kind of publicity, irrespective of whether it is good or bad or ugly.

Examples of Personal attacks in movie reviews

For instance, one prominent reviewer who shot to fame by making below-the-belt personal attacks was Sudhish Kamath (reviewer for The Hindu).  Sudhish Kamath was first noticed through his movie review of Vikram's Kanthasamy, which was filled with personal insults. In his review, he went to the extent of commenting about Vikram's sexuality and whether "the actor uses his movies as an outlet for his repressed sexuality". He once called Sarath Kumar as possessing "man tits" in his movie review of 1977. In Sudhish Kamath's review of Mayakkam Enna, he baselessly accused GV Prakash "a thief" without specifically pointing out any song in Mayakkam Enna as a copy/inspiration. He further wrote in his review that "GV Prakash has constantly proved to be a thief. Once you are in the business of stealing, you are a thief no matter what else you do".

In Sudhish Kamath's recent Aarohanam review, he made another personal attack -- "Bala, Sashikumar, Vasanta Balan...please learn from Aarohanam by Lakshmi Ramakrishnan". If there is a real point to make, this statement would be acceptable if he had compared aspects of Aarohanam with Angaadi Theru or Subramaniapuram rather than belittling and comparing people. We don't want to single out Sudhish Kamath. Unfortunately, all of our top of mind examples for personal attacks happened to be that of him.

Another example of personal attacks is Bosskey's video review about Harris Jayaraj where he makes blatant comments saying that "he is waiting for Harris to compose at least one original tune in his career". This is again unfair and irresponsible personal attack coated with sarcasm and mockery. Many such examples from other reviewers can be found for every movie review. But, the above two are called out since these reviewers are relatively well-known among movie buffs.

Good Examples of Responsible Reviewers

Good movie critics try to offer insights into a film’s storytelling, visual and technical achievements or failings. We will cover a few positive examples. One of the leading trade analyst and twit-reviewer, is usually very sensitive in pointing out movie's downsides with a genuine sense of responsibility not to hurt the film industry. A video reviewer should be appreciated for their contagious passion in their reviews. They have also refrained from personal attacks and keep the reviews positive. Our official reviewers make their best efforts to ensure that the reviews don't become personal while making critical observations about the content.

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