Reviews of "Nope": Nope

In a past life I was a literary prodigy. Or at least I was convinced I was by my treatment at the hands of my English professors at Rutgers. For this reason, I feel like I have some authority to talk about movie reviews. The short answer is, out of a need to attract readers, they tend to read more into movies than is legitimately “there.”

I had one professor — my favorite, as a matter of fact — illustrate the point by talking about a story as if it was an allegory about auto racing, a subject in which he was expert. The amusing part was that he could analyze a story in terms of the histories of multiple, different types of auto racing (e.g., Indianapolis 500, Formula 1, etc.). At some level, the allegorical inferences were shown to be arbitrary. In the same way, people tend to see crucifixes and Christ images all through Hemingway.

I put “there” in quotes because of course the movie is really one’s experience of the movie, and people can make all kinds of inferences, some more justifiable than others. The real question is what is supportable.

I watched the latest Jordan Peele film last night and enjoyed it thoroughly. I take nothing away from the film’s artistic virtuosity. Reviews still tend to make it more of a sociological commentary than what it mostly is: a very well done scifi movie. All of Peele’s films are smart about race. I happen to think “Get Out” is the sharpest knife in that drawer.

The threads therein about race make it more interesting, but they are somewhere short of The Battle of Algiers. Some reviewers blather on about the importance of “spectacle” or the exploitation of animals or the film industry itself. They don’t seem capable of analyzing “Nope” as film. Indeed, if they were, they wouldn’t be publishing on general interest platforms. The average person has no interest in such things. I personally have zero expertise myself.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the reviews is that they analyze a film as if it’s a text. I can criticize the reviews on such grounds, given my literary pretensions, but I have to admit as film I am as blind to the virtues of “Nope” as anybody off the street.

I can only devolve to the insistence that it is just fun to watch.