WTF are crtics thinking

I gushed about this to anyone who could listen. It's so good at what it hopes to achieve. It's not written to be a serious film festival contender. It's what I wanted to see after teaching high school. What should I have seen? "Third world prison guard slowly, painfully, grimly and in subtitles begins to see the humanity and depravity in the foreign inmates in his charge but is helpless to prevent their execution, beating, rape, and anything else hard to watch." What fun! weeeeee!

Product placement is a fact of life now. At least Ben Stiller got to make that funny comment about Papa John's cups. No, I don't get it, but I loved the line.
Are Papa John's cups weird? Now I want to go see. Arrested Development had fun with product placement. Now I want to see them seamlessly work in a plug for Haley's M-O.

oh, based on other responses, I guess I need to add I am American of northern English immigrants early 1800s (Some Anglo-Norman 1066)

critics can be wrong and they constantly are. if you actually read some of the reviews, you'll discover very unreasonable criticisms and ridiculous nitpicking.

ebert's take on zoolander for example. he praised everything about it except the inclusion of the rather innocuous assassination plot as "culturally insensitive"(he may have used another term or phrase, but that was his basic criticism of the movie), for that he didn't give it a higher rating than it deserved.

the criticism of stiller's other film cable guy was poorly received due to jim carrey's against the grain portrayal of a "dark" character, a sociopath, essentially. but that characterization made him that much more hilarious than another ace ventura knock-off.

and now, walter mitty gets panned due to its simplicity, because people fancy themselves intellectual, they like to regard thematically simple films as "culturally dumbed down". they fail to distinguish the fact that simple films can be good films too, just as complex films with multiple hidden narratives, subtle social commentary, can still be mediocre or bad.

that said, you can think this film is average or mediocre, or simple, etc. i concur. but anyone who thinks this is a bad film, or a film not deserving of a benefit of a doubt due to "product placement" is a moron. end of story.

[deleted]

It is a very simple system to understand.

Good movies get bad ratings, and bad movies get good ratings.

Good movies, with bad ratings, will get shown on TV endlessly anyway, so it is only bad movies that need to be propped up / flogged / lied about.

The scenery is beautiful but the movie isn't really all that special at all in my opinion.

"the day I tried to live, I learned that I was alive"

I agree with you 100%! It´s been a long time since I saw a movie that I loved as much as this one! It was beautifully shot and the actors were great. I left the cinema with a very warm feeling in my heart!

Much like almost every Ben Stiller film from the past ten years this one stressed me out something fierce. If I had to compare it to another film which I enjoyed equally, that movie would be 'Hancock'. I think that says it all. No more Ben Stiller from here on out.
P.S. There's an 'I' before the 'T' in 'CRITIC'

A movie where a guy stands on a plane during the flight is either a parody or a terrible movie.

I appreciate the scenery, but this was so shallow, just bad, bad, bad.