By John C.

As many of you know, the Ashton Kutcher/Kathrine Heigl vehicle Killers opened this past Friday.  The Canadian distributor, Maple Pictures, followed the lead of the American distributor, Lionsgate, and did not screen the film for press in advance of release.  I found out about this 3-weeks ago, before the official announcement was even released.

They call it an “experiment.”  To see how well the film performs on it’s own, without reviews, just being promoted through social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook.  I find it hard to believe that the studio thinks the nasty or over hyped comments that a lot of films receive on the internet, are better than professional criticism.

Do studios not realize that this is just annoying to reviewers who want to meet an opening day deadline?  I could have still caught up with it first thing on opening day, but as it wasn’t officially screened, and is not something that I’m really expecting to be that good, I feel no obligation to not wait until the DVD release.  Call it what you like, but for me, it’s a partial boycott.

20th Century Fox had enough faith in Marmaduke to put it forth for critics, and despite very low expectations, I was actually, very surprisingly, in the small minority that kind of liked it.  You’re meaning to tell me that Warner Bros. screened Sex and the City 2 without expecting it to be panned by the majority of critics?  No, but I still gave it a chance, no matter how painful it was.  Who knows if bad reviews contributed to it underperforming a little, but the first one didn’t get the best reviews, either, and was still a big hit.  Look at an average vehicle like Transformers 2.

If you don’t want us to see your movie, then don’t show us your movie.  But don’t necessarily expect us to give it a chance on our own.  Before I started officially reviewing movies, I would always proceed with more caution to something that got no initial reviews, then I would to something that got bad reviews.  Audiences know that if a studio won’t screen their own film, then maybe there’s something wrong with it.

I will give any movie a chance, but if the opportunity is not specifically given for a movie like Killers, then it’s not going to be on the top of my priorities list.  But if no movie with low expectations was screened, then no critics would ever be pleasantly surprised, or have enough film’s for their worst list at the end of the year.

I would have happily screened Killers, and offered up my personal opinions on the film.  Kudos to the studios who hold their heads high and screen every movie with the same priority to as many critics as possible.  To everyone else, stop holding your tail between your legs and look at all the movies that have been trashed by critics and are still runaway hits.  I think it’s true that a movie will either be popular or not regardless of reviews, but people are more dependent on reviews, even bad ones, than you might initially think.

For every good movie there will be some who hate it, and for every bad movie there will be those who like it.  If you’re going to screen some, you screen ‘em all, and you’ll win some and you’ll lose some.  Good reviews are better than bad reviews, but bad reviews are better than no reviews.