YMMV / Paul Verhoeven

• Broken Base: Much like Lars von Trier, he's seen among cinephiles as either a brilliant cinematic genius or a pretentious exploitation hack, with no middle ground.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Verhoeven has explicitly stated his belief that when you have a scene of horrific bloody violence, going over the top with it reduces the horror and turns it comedic. This can be seen put into good use in RoboCop (1987) and Total Recall (1990). He criticized the cuts made to the boardroom scene and Murphy's death in RoboCop as having the result of actually making them more disturbing.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Due to the extremely angsty and often downright venomous tone of his work, most of Verhoeven's films are prone to fall into this.

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