Reviews? Bah, humbug!

I may have said before that I can't remember my last visit to the cinema.  I would have said that my last visit to the theatre was even longer ago but I suddenly recalled going to the pantomime once some years back when the Lions took a party of schoolchildren.  And there was the time the Old Bat and I stayed with our daughter and she took us to see Miss Saigon.  The distaff side raved about it but, in all honesty, I was bored.

Given our non-attendance at both theatre and cinema, I can't see much point in wading through the reviews in the paper.  Granted, there are occasions when we might buy a DVD and watch a film but by then the film is so old that almost everybody else has forgotten it.  I do, however, glance at the television reviews.  Sometimes.

I have yet to work out if those reviewers the papers use are the same sort of people that I meet on a day-to-day basis.  It seems to me that when the reviewers give wild acclaim to a forthcoming show, both the OB and I disagree with them.  Perhaps the problem arises because the reviewers are arty types whereas I like to think that the old Dutch and I are plain, down-to-earth types.

And it's not just reviews published before a show is aired.  I sometimes glance at what the newspaper reviewer has to say about the previous evenings television.  I only do it sometimes because I am not really a masochist and reading the purple prose about a programme I watched for all of five minutes before pressing the 'off' button gets me agitated.  Or maybe, as was the case recently, the reviewer is just so . . .  Grrr!  Only the other day the writer was scathing about a programme, calling it 'twee', and going on to say, patronisingly, that he (or maybe it was a she) supposed it amused the masses - or words to that effect.

What's so special about reviewers, anyway?

Just think how awful it would be if, one day, I found myself sitting next to a reviewer at a dinner.  I would find it very difficult to bite my tongue but would have to try for the sake of my host and hostess.