Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has generally gotten horrendous reviews from frou-frou, white-wine-sipping movie critics -- it currently has an abysmal 20% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Still, the movie looks like it'll be the first all-but-universally-panned flick to earn $400 million in domestic ticket sales.

So who needs movie critics?

Apparently not the unwashed hordes who line up to buy Junior Mints and popcorn on Saturday nights. Most mall habitués view movies as entertainment -- not as art, social commentary, therapy, or any of that dreary stuff critics love.

In fact, most moviegoers are perfectly capable of making their choices without reading the drivel published on the review page of the local poop sheet. (Note to newspaper publishers looking to cut costs: Behead the movie critic first.)

Why not offer reviews from the ticket-buyer’s perspective: Is this flick worth the price of admission? Think of it as a kind of Consumer Reports for moviedom.

Instead of a meditation on the exquisite sensibilities and profound insights of movie critics, a review aimed at moviegoers might look something like this:

"In Dead Snow, ski bunnies and their dorky suitors battle Nazi zombies in Norway. The movie offers valuable tips on how to make and throw Molotov cocktails when battling the un-dead. (For best results, don't lob them at the walls of the ski shack.)

"It also has picture-perfect scenery, a snowmobile used as a weapon, live med-student brains pickled in booze, machine guns, bullets, sex, buckets of blood ,and more yuks-per-frame than every French film ever made. Dead Snow's more nutritious than a bacon double cheeseburger, even for non-zombies.

"Impress your sweetie. Go!"

Most “critics” never learned the lesson of their seventh-grade book reports: Plot summary isn’t criticism. Come to think of it, plot summary kills all the fun of a movie -- even romantic comedies, where everyone knows the goofballs will overcome every pratfall and travail and get together just before the credits roll.

Of course, there are top-notch movie critics. Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize, and A.O. Scott at The New York Times is just a notch or 2 behind. But isn’t much of what Pauline Kael wrote for The New Yorker a bit hard to take now?

When it comes to perfecting the fine art of windbaggery, however, few have gone as far as V.A. Musetto of the New York Post.

In a review of Wristcutters: A Love Story -- an upbeat film about how those who commit suicide knock around in a strange afterlife -- Musetto summarizes the plot (complete with the names of actors you’ve never heard of in parentheses) and finally gets to the point:

“Croatian-born director-writer Goran Dukic instills Wristcutters with the absurdist humor you find in films from the Balkans. The result is wholly original, sort of like The Wizard of Oz as filtered through the sensibilities of Emir Kusturica, the cult filmmaker and musician.”

Well, obviously.

Paramount distributes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for DreamWorks Animation (DWA). Here’s the key to the movie’s success: Megan Fox goes toe to toe with Autobots and Decepticons dressed in tiny shorts.


Now, that's art.