I am writing this to vent my frustration over Doug Walker aka The Nostalgia Critic from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. If you guys don't know him he is a Internet reviewer dedicated in watching kid movies mostly from the 80s and the 90sw with a comedic touch and in very formulaic manner. He is to movies what the Angry Video Game Nerd is to well video games, ripping terrible movies into a new asshole and is usually very funny to watch. Unfortunately, in the past six months he is getting worse by the day and his reviews are becoming hit or miss recently. Nowadays it seems like he is getting desperate over a joke and its quite clear he is way past his prime now. Let me enlighten you why these are the 5 Reasons why Doug Walker has become stale as Nostalgia Critic. Why 5? Because 11 isn’t straightforward enough.
1. He bitches all the time
His review style is plot summary for the movie and nitpicking. He doesn't bring good points or think of different directions the movie might have taken, he complains about frivolous details, exaggerate the negatives and brands every single movie he review stupid, unwatchable and terrible. This can be funny if you aren't familiar with the movie in question and take his view as a truth. But if you've actually seen the movie in question, then you may find yourself scratching your head, wondering, "Was it really that bad?". It doesn’t work when he tries to bring logic or normal thinking toward something like The Care Bears Movie or Tom and Jerry that is obviously for kids and very brainless, so it’s a moot point to discuss how unrealistic this is in that kind of movie. Granted this complaint isn't all that new thing, but its all a downhill from here.
2. He doesn't make proper research
Its pretty obvious that all he knows from the movie is from what he watches. For someone who nitpicks worthless details in, he doesn't look around techinical details or the history behind the movie. In his Mortal Kombat review he complained about Liu Kang reason to fight in the tournament is because he is... asian. Which is not true, he is fighting to avenge his little brother killed by the bad guy but he obviously leaves out this important plot device from the review. He also called sheninigans on Superman Animated Series review over the Kents adopting Kal-El despite this being you know HIS GODDAMN ORIGIN STORY. For crying out loud, he nitpicked SUPERMAN'S ORIGIN STORY. He claims to know about Spider-Man but complains about he not being dark and brooding as Batman when they are two superheroes with different motifs (Batman is dark and brooding, Spiderman jokey and snarky); he complained about X-Men First Class not having Wolverine or Rogue but only the boring X-Men (you know Banshee, Havok, Darwin... the boring X-Men :-P). In his Mr. Magoo review, he claimed Peter Dinklage to have portrayed the mandrill who attacked Lieslie Niesen. Not only this is blatantly false but also out of taste.
http://static3.comicvine.com/uploads...r_Dinklage.jpgTyrion Lannistar was a mandrill? Seems legit3. He screams a lot
Oh my god the screaming. If I could sum up his reviews to you who haven't seen him yet let me illustrate it for you
If that doesn't sound childish and obnoxious to you, then I don't know what will. This is so bad actually he lost his voice a few times but that didn’t stopped from reviewing either. I don’t know how people can find screaming at high pitch funny only his fans who love to see him squirm of course.
4. He is very condescending toward characters
He is very prone to call out characters in their movies over questionable acts to feel self-righteous about it, regardless of their situation. Sometimes its well deserved (such as the heroes in "Jurassic Park: Lost World") but in others it feels unnecessary and mean (the fairies in Fergunlly). But even if its deserved, it isn’t funny either. His Patch Adams review is considered the best one in a while but the fact is he spends the entire review acting like a smug asshole in much higher moral ground than Robin Williams (Granted that movie suck but still). In Breaking Dawn review he got offended with the abortion issue not the fact that movie royally sucked (news flash: space is vacuum) but the fact that “abortion was brought over the table” was disgusting for him. Nevermind there was a half-vampire abomination about be birthed and was dangerous to its mother’s life and potentially everybody around her, the fact little girls were being exposed to abortion was too much for him to handle as if everything else in Twilight is less worse in comparison. It wouldn’t be so bad if the Critic is shown in several videos to be a hair trigger tempered all-around unlikeable jerkass who commits acts that are as bad if not as worse than the characters he claim to commit. And it doesn’t help one of his characters is a Satanist. So the pot is calling the kettle black it seems.
5. He burned himself out
His cutoff point is around late 90s and with few exceptions such as Alone in the Dark, Battlefield Earth or The Room He wouldn’t review a movie unless IF they were nostalgic. Around September he reviewed 2000’s The Cell and after that he is doing more mainstream movies with frequency such as Signs, the “bad” Star Trek movies, Alien Ressurrection and more recently Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Its evident he completely depleted his supply of truly bad movies and is working his way around with what he can. It doesn’t help that there are several other movie critics beside him ( Cinema Snob and Film Brain) that pick from the same material, his series has become stale over the time. At the time he first appeared there wasn’t many other web reviewers like him except the AVGN but after his success he suffered a gradual loss in creativity and many others might as well take his place.
Thank you for reading. Comments are appreciated. If you watch him leave your opinion (please be constructive) if you haven’t watch him, tell me what you think of him.