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movie criitcs are not obligated to "like" anything; they are free to praise whatever they feel and likewise to pan something they detest - however, if they are going to pontificate, they do have some responsibility to put a movie in context. for example, I never read any Lord of the Rings books, so the movies make very little sense to me. someone who's never read Shakespeare would be completely baffled by "Shakespeare in Love". even the movive versions of crappy TV sitcoms make even less sense if you're not familiar with the original shows
given the analogies I've made, I don't think it would have hurt the critics to spend a couple of hours watching the Madea stage plays on DVD so they could have some understanding of why the movie appeared to contain so many disparate elements - if the critics did this and still said the movie sucked, then so be it. but at least they would have done some homework to support their position. such sloppy work from amateur bloggers is one thing - quite another from established "journalists"
