Fearless Couch Potato: Pearl Should Have Stayed Home

We’re fans of Rex Reed’s breezy brand of film reviewing; if nothing else, it’s a perfect fit for the Observer’s Boca Raton–for–critics movie page, compared to the Village Voice sagacity of Andrew Sarris. Sometimes, however, the man does unleash a whopper. Like panning Oldboy by positing, “What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi.” Or Spirited Away by proclaiming, “No surprise coming from a people raised on chicken katsudon.” It’s almost a part of his appeal. And then there’s this week’s (positive) review of A Mighty Heart.

“Try as I do to give these people every benefit of the doubt, I can’t avoid equating the Pearls in Karachi with American forces in Baghdad. None of us had any business going there in the first place.”

Sure, Myron. A reporter pursuing an important story, at a risk few of us can fathom, is the same as one country marching into another. Oh, well, what else can you expect from a gnomic cackler weaned on martinis and Schadenfreude. —Michael Idov