Years ago, a fellow named Claude Knobler used to publish capsule movie reviews on a site called Hollywoodhollywood.com. One day, all of his reviews vanished and someone else’s review appeared. However, I was browsing through his old reviews courtesy of the Internet Archive and found this brilliant analysis of the 2002 movie The Count of Monte Cristo:
This thing’s like a Pop-Tart: it’s not good for you, it’s not well made and if you give me a thousand of them, I’ll love every single one.
If only I could fashion review rhetoric like that. I think that sentiment pretty much sums up every guilty pleasure ever and might describe how many of us regard video games.
(I have also long cherished Claude’s review of the 2001 movie Rat Race, where watching it “is like being tickled by sweaty guy with halitosis. I laughed, but I was never really happy about it.” I often apply that same analysis to the American Pie series.)
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