David Edelstein, clueless film critic

After seeing "300" this weekend, I was perversely interested in what NPR's review was like. The review by David Edelstein was not only predictable, but really atrocious. You can listen to it hereabouts:

NPR : The Spartans and the Persians Battle in '300'

I wouldn't mind the negative review if it were pitched above the level of a "Church Lady's" outrage. So I ranted back to NPR:

"Edelstein is clueless: basically, Edelstein's review says that he has a problem with computer graphics and that he is easily distracted by big muscles. He's not reviewing a movie, he's carping. Look, "300" is not camp (Edelstein doesn't know the meaning of the word), and it's not conventional drama (like those two classical failures 'Troy' and 'Alexander'), so to evaluate the movie on those terms is to be obtuse. And "300" has nothing to be defensive about, as he presumes. "300" is a film interpretation of a >>graphic<< novel, yet Edelstein dimly takes issue with the movie's graphic stylizations, whether it's the computer-generated Persian hordes or the classical posturing of the male physique. And while Edelstein sneers that "300" is a "video game without a joystick," he misses the intense physicality stamped throughout the movie, both at the battle front and home front. Edelstein's presumption that only a Playstation-addled, testosterone-besotted teenage male could like this movie is certainly a bit harsh, but no more than interpreting his review as the work of an out-of-touch hack who cannot see over the generation gap, and cannot comprehend the trend that movies are not only visual, but becoming more graphical. Edelstein's cheap shots at actors' "pectorals" was an amusing reminder that some reviewers are easily frightened by the human body, unless it's Scarlett Johanssen's.