‘Critics don’t speak for the people’
Experts say nay, but audiences say 'yea mon' to Bob Marley movie
KINGSTON, Jamaica – While the Bob Marley: One Love movie has received tepid reviews from critics and some skeptical Jamaicans, the biopic scores high among most audiences, locally and internationally.
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 43 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating “mixed or average” reviews. However, audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on an A+ to F scale.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, only 42 per cent of 163 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.3/10, however the audience score is a stellar 92 per cent among more than 1,000 reviews.
What’s more, PostTrak gave it a 91 per cent positive score, with 80 per cent saying they would definitely recommend the film.
So why is there a disconnect between audiences and the tastes of the critics?
“I believe the movie is getting the biggest support from where it matters most: the box office. In many instances experts have their biases masquerading as analysis. We often make the mistake that critics speak for the people. They don’t. I am not saying that critics do not serve an important social function. We just need to understand that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what the critics say is always gospel,” Jamaican entertainment insider Clyde McKenzie told Observer Online.
Indeed, audiences are voting with their wallets because as of February 20, 2024, Bob Marley: One Love has grossed US$54.4 million in the United States and Canada, and US$29 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of US$83.4 million.
Delving into the divide between audience and the critics, a Screen Rant review noted that “Some critics found the biopic long and tedious and thought it didn’t fully capture Marley’s legacy, while others felt the story simply played it too safe, relying on conventional biopic formulas and tropes instead of digging a little deeper with its storytelling.
“Audiences acknowledged the movie couldn’t be expected to capture every detail of Marley’s life but praised the biopic as being accurate and the type of adaptation the singer would’ve been proud of,” it added.
Most reviews from critics praised Kingsley Ben-Adir’s performance as the reggae king, but felt the film was “too safe.”
Wall Street Journal wrote: “If the film is ambitious, it is also inert.”
The Associated Press was fairly staid in its review, saying: “Though ‘One Love’ drifts into increasingly conventional biopic scenes, its spirit remains fairly true to Marley — enough, at least, that you overlook some of its faults.”
