Embedded

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Crit

I'd say the reason for the barely fresh 62% Rotten Tomatoes score has to do with viewers having been lured by a trailer that makes it look like a reasonably brainless comedy, but then I see that the "top critics" score is in the rotten range, at 54%. Wtf? (Speaking of which, will you still respect me if I admit that I didn't get the title until about a week ago?)

Is is a great film? No. Is it a pretty damn good treatment of the dangers both gender-specific and non in testosteronic professions that incorporate addictive quantities of adrenaline? Yeah, I think so. And while it can fairly be claimed that I'm incapable of finding any fault with Tina Fey, Date Night notwithstanding, . . . well, that just seems like a sensible policy to me.

I think what we have here is an example of the aggregate scores being largely composed of the same sort of people who refuse to greenlight gynocentric pictures for the studios. In fact, I just counted: among female top critics, this gets 70% positive rating; among the boys, it's under 50%. Which is one reason for my new year's resolution: this is precisely the sort of middling-rated film I'd have skipped last year (maybe not, given the Tina factor, but maybe so), and I'd have been the poorer for it.