Originally Posted By ctdsnark Several weeks ago,on the day that "X-men Origins:Wolverine" opened,I was somewhat surprised to find no review of it in my local paper;according to the editor,the picture wasn't made available for the critics.It happened again today,with "Night At The Museum 2". Withholding pictures from advance screenings for critics is certainly nothing new---to my knowledge,it's been going on for some ten-odd years.Usually,comedies,horror,action,and the occasional drama,whose quality can best be described as ranging from very mediocre to downright terrible,have compelled their distributers to withhold them as a stop-gap measure to protect them from the inevitable hostile critical reaction,{or at least delay them}and hope for the best."Wolverine" and "Museum 2" are,to the best of my knowledge,the first time this has been done with highly anticipated summer movies. Ironically,in today's paper,there was a review---mostly negative---for "Dance Flick",which is,of course,a spoof movie---a genre that,due to the efforts of some very bad filmmakers,has become deader than stop-motion special effects. I saw "Wolverine" when it came out,and I liked it;I plan to see "Museum 2" this evening,and have high hopes.Perhaps this is what Roger Ebert spoke of several years ago when he gave a less-than-enthusiastic review of one of the recent "Star Wars" films,but also acknowledged that such movies are largely immune to bad reviews because of their built-in audience---in many cases,a large one.
Originally Posted By JeffG I suspect that this was an issue with your paper as there were lots of reviews published for both films on or before the date of release. -Jeff
