Movie Review Writing Mistakes perpetrated by a Film Critic happen, both on the professional and amateur level, all the time. These movie review writing mistakes are sneaky, slipping into perfectly good movie reviews, corrupting them. Lately I have read movie reviews that were absolutely appalling, rancid. I have noted the plethora of mistakes these reviewers made, a movie review writing pitfalls list you, as a film critic or a would-be film critic, should avoid and why you should avoid them.
Robert Pattinson, Why Not? Chalkboard
Avoid these Mistakes
1. Writing a review for a film you are not passionate about, either in favor of the film or against it.
Why?: Your review will not have a heartbeat and will be superficial.
2. Talking about irrelevancies: your experience in the movie theater, driving there, the people you saw it with , etc.
Why?: Nobody cares. That has nothing to do with the film. You are most-likely not Harry Knowles, a zealot of this type of movie review writing. You are better off sending those experiences to periodical Who Gives a Fig Quarterly. Concentrate on the themes in the film and your analysis of them.
3. No structure.
Why?: Who wants to read a sloppy movie review where the film critic’s ideas are all over the place with no cohesion?
4. Generalities e.g. Great acting, funny, wow, cool effects. You and the family will have fun. It was bad.
Why?: If nothing specific sticks out in your mind positively or negatively about the film, nothing that you can cite in your movie review, the likelihood the film had an impact on you and will have an effect on your readers is minute.
5. A movie review conclusion with no support.
Why?: An unsupported movie review conclusion means your movie review hypothesis and its body (everything that came before the conclusion) has no bolstering, no facts in its favor. If you have no facts to back up your hypothesis, your conclusion can be written off as unfounded or even worse, fallacious. I previously wrote about movie review conclusions here: How to Write a Movie Review.
6. Not rating the film on a scale.
Why?: It’s the simplest way to get your opinion across about a film. Its visual and easily understandable. Do not leave it out of your movie reviews’ conclusion.
7. Writing a review to meet a predetermined word length with no substance.
Why?: If your mandate is to write a five to six hundred word review and you write a review filled with fluff (film synopsis *Lol*, theater experiences, no structure, weak conclusion), no one will come back to read your next review or subscribe to your RSS Feed.
An example of What “not” to Avoid
Here is an example of a film review that avoids these 7 Movie Review Writing Mistakes: Snowpiercer (2013) Movie Review. You will find no film synopsis in this movie review, no generalities, no fluff, no banal movie theater observations, a film rating, and most of all, passion about the film.
Advice
If you are not getting paid as a film critic to write a movie review, why review a film you are ambivalent towards? It’s a waste of your time and your lack of passion will come through in your writing. Spare yourself and your audience.
Remember your Purpose
The purpose of film criticism “is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively…a way to assess the artistic merit and public appeal of a movie. Filmgoers use reviews to help them determine whether to view a particular film.”
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