History Main / StrawCritic

See also ReviewerStockPhrases. Compare BiasSteamroller, FanDumb, UnpleasableFanbase, CausticCritic, and FanHater.

* One character in ''Film/LadyInTheWater'' is a movie critic whose primary traits are that he is very GenreSavvy and is extremely jaded. He sometimes gives advice to the other characters, but he eventually suffers from DeathByGenreSavviness. It's worth mentioning that the director Creator/MNightShyamalan's most recent movie at the time, ''Film/TheVillage'', had been his first film since he first got popular to not be generally well-received, and to receive a number of very negative reviews. This was something which did not go unnoticed or unremarked upon by many of the real-life critics who reviewed the movie. Creator/RogerEbert found that, in fact, the Straw Critic ''got off easy''.

* Creator/JMichaelStraczynski's ''Franchise/{{Superman}}: Grounded'' had an entire slew of straw critics in the form of reporters asking Superman a series of ([[StrawmanHasaPoint perfectly reasonable]]) questions about why he randomly decided to walk across America. Not only does this attempt completely fail to recognize the in-universe hypocrisy (Clark Kent is a reporter) but it also foreshadowed that we'd get a series where basic logic is ignored (even though the story is ''supposed'' to take place in a more realistic depiction of America) in favor of [[{{Superdickery}} Superman being a dick.]]
* From ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' story "Calliope," one of the many story ideas Ric Madoc devises [[spoiler:after he is cursed with "ideas in abundance" by the Sandman, in a case of BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor]] involves "the fraternity of critics": "In reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a [[{{Pun}} critical mass]]..."
* The ''ComicBook/{{Viz}}'' strip "The Critics" is about a pair of stereotypical ''avant garde'' art critics who despise anything vaguely accessible to people outside the ''avant garde'' clique, love anything "shocking", and see themselves as politically revolutionary while being '''ludicrously''' intellectually-snobbish and class-prejudiced.

** Sam the Eagle occasionally took on aspects of the TrueArt breed of straw critic. The laughs at his expense usually derived from [[FeigningIntelligence his complete ignorance of the subject in question]] (he thought Shakespeare wrote ''RobinHood'') or by having a classically trained guest star (Rudolf Nureyev, Beverly Sills) cheerfully joining in on the show's usual silliness to Sam's chagrin.

[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/{{Stonetoss}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/strawcritic.png]]]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/strawcritic.png]]

[[folder:Comicbooks]]

** In a more recent internet video Sam tries to sing American Woman (hazarding that it was written by, "I don't know...John Philip Sousa?"), only to discover that it is not, as he believed, a ballad in praise of Lady Liberty, at which point he starts getting into this on patriotic grounds. But what really gets his hackles up is that the Guess Who are ''[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Canadian]]''.

* ''Movie/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'' features a particularly obnoxious one in Jonathan Cooper (The Third), a suburban newspaper columnist with a [[SmallNameBigEgo ridiculously high opinion of himself]]; in one scene, he boasts about his ability to "chew places like this up and spit them into the toilet!" He threatens to close Merlin's magic shop if he can't prove his magical powers to Jonathan's satisfaction, resulting in Merlin gifting him a book of spells that quickly ruins his life...not that most viewers will [[AssholeVictim sympathize with him]].

* The ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk and the Critic" featured a theater critic who reviewed a play Julie Teeger was in. He generally praised the play but singled out Julie's performance as "forgettable." It turned out that [[spoiler:he hadn't even been there during that number, meaning that he wrote the scathing comment based on a wild guess]]. Oh, and he also [[spoiler:killed the woman he was cheating on his fiancee with, and had only attended the play in the first place as an alibi]].

* One character in ''Film/LadyInTheWater'' is a movie critic whose primary traits are that he is very GenreSavvy and is extremely jaded. He sometimes gives advice to the other characters. Eventually, he suffers from DeathByGenreSavviness. It's worth mentioning that the director Creator/MNightShyamalan's most recent movie at the time, ''The Village'', had been critically panned, something which did not go unnoticed or unremarked upon by many of the real-life critics who reviewed the movie. Creator/RogerEbert found that in fact, the Straw Critic got ''off easy''.