Director Kevin Smith has unleashed a furious rant at critics after his new film Cop Out received a flurry of negative reviews - insisting he'd rather see members of the public give their opinion instead of "nasty" movie experts.
The comedy, starring Bruce Willis as a New York police officer, was released in the U.S. last month and has been slated by reviewers, with many claiming the movie is let down by a weak script, lacklustre jokes and a contrived plot.
Smith is fuming about the unflattering comments, insisting he feels like his film has been "bullied" - and has vowed to force critics to pay to review his movies from now on.
In a series of posts on his Twitter.com page, he writes, "I gotta say that every day I hate film theory & film students & critics more & more. Film fandom's become a nasty bloodsport where cartoonishly rooting for failure gets the hit count up. Watching them beat the s**t out of it was sad. Like, it's called Cop Out; that sound like a very ambitious title to you? You REALLY wanna s**t in the mouth of a flick that so OBVIOUSLY strived for nothing more than laughs. Was it called Schindler's Cop Out?
"Writing a nasty review for Cop Out is akin to bullying a retarded kid. All you've done is make fun of something that wasn't doing you any harm and wanted only to give some cats some fun laughs."
And the experience has convinced Smith the system is "backwards" - he'd prefer to turn the job of reviewing movies over to members of the public.
He adds, "Realised whole system's upside down: so we let a bunch of people see it for free & they s**t all over it? Meanwhile, people who'd REALLY like to see the flick for free are made to pay? Bulls**t: from now on, any flick I'm ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week. Why am I giving an arbitrary 500 people power over what I do at all, let alone for free? Next flick, I'd rather pick 500 randoms from Twitter & let THEM see it for free in advance, then post THEIR opinions, good AND bad. Same difference. Why's their opinion more valid? It's a backwards system."
