Reviewing Reviews: Entertainment Weekly vs. The New Yorker

I know we were encouraged to keep "I" out of the picture, and I tried to adhere to that. However, in my attempt to compare and contrast two reviews of last year's family dramedy, "The Kids Are All Right," the idea that kept jumping out at me was this: an effective review can be just as personal as the material it discusses.

The first review I chose, written by Lisa Schwarzbaum for Entertainment Weekly, was going to be my choice for "a review that doesn't work." It took the generic route in that it didn't provide me with any further insights than I already had. I haven't seen "The Kids Are All Right," but I know the plot of the movie and that awards season is abuzz with praise for Annette Bening. Schwarzbaum's review told me everything I expected, and so, because I finished the review with no further thoughts, I found it ineffective.

The second review was written by Anthony Lane for The New Yorker. I hadn't yet chosen this review as "a review that works," because during my initial read, I found myself on the defensive. In Schwarzbaum's review, she refers to Mark Ruffalo's usual charm, but Lane describes the biological father's character a bit differently: "Paul, a bearded restauranteur, turns out to be randy but unthreatening, warm to the touch but cool about stuff, with a dash of smugness in his easy smile, all of which is a way of saying that he is played by Mark Ruffalo." My first thought was a rather shallow, "Hey, what if I like that about Mark Ruffalo?"

Twenty seconds later, when I actually thought about what Lane was saying on that point and several others, it occurred to me: These reviews come from two polar-opposite publications. Entertainment Weekly is for everyone, and The New Yorker is for a different thinker. Both reviews work, but for different people. Where I had nothing else to explore after reading Schwarzbaum's review, I thought for a long time about the points Lane made in his. Lane's review works for me, personally, because it left me wanting to explore his ideas and see if I actually agreed with them. After sitting with his more challenging opinions, I appreciated them, but I knew that if my mother had read his article, she would have wanted a more straightforward answer to the question, "Should I see this or not?"

That is why I decided, for this particular assignment, that the use of "I" was necessary. Schwarzbaum's review of "The Kids Are All Right" did nothing for me, and Lane's gave me food for thought.