Critics vs. America: The Chasm Grows Wider

There’s a reason the People’s Choice Awards and the Oscars don’t crown similar winners.

The former reflects the box office power of a particular film. The latter? Winners are chosen by artists honoring the best creative achievements in a given year. It’s the most prestigious award in film and, arguably, popular culture.

Or at least it was.

Now, the Oscars are deeply politicized, from the films likely to be greenlit, to the checklist movies must follow to qualify for the industry’s highest honor – Best Picture.

The critic-audience chasm, often sizable on populist fare, has grown even larger of late. Blame the media elites or, more specifically, the woke revolution. Modern reviewers don’t just assess a story’s quality. They factor in other elements, from a film’s diversity score to the politics in play.

The more progressive, the better. Even Richard Roeper, no conservative he, noted in 2016 how his fellow critics graded “Ghostbusters” on a curve because of its four female leads. And audiences loathed that reboot.

The chasm between critics and audience has only ballooned since then.

A keen-eyed Bill Maher, an avowed progressive, noted the trend during his Oct. 22 broadcast.

The HBO star cited the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score for Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix special, “The Closer,” was roughly 50 points lower than the audience tally (43 percent “rotten” to 95 percent “fresh”)

“It says a lot about the differentiation between real people,” Maher said.

Other examples similarly show the growing divide between the two communities. And there’s no better place to spot it than Rotten Tomatoes. The review aggregator site captures the pulse of both public and “official” critics.

Chappelle knows how that works. His previous Netflix special, 2019’s “Sticks and Stones,” similarly mocked sacred woke cows in his routine. The critic-public split on that special? 35 percent “rotten” from critics, 99 percent “fresh” from general audiences.

Critics similarly disdain faith-based movies. Think “The Passion of the Christ,” one of the most shocking box office smashes in modern times — (49/80). Or recall “God’s Not Dead,” an indie Christian film shredded by critics but embraced by faithful audiences (12/75) and “Miracles from Heaven” (45/80).

Pro-abortion fare draw raves from critics across the board, even if they similarly draw some populist kudos. Think “Obvious Child” (90/72), “Plan B” (96/82) and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (99/52).

Political documentaries similarly capture this extreme critic/audience split. Progressive docs like Hulu’s “Hillary” (80/45), “Knock Down the Houses” (99/10) and “Time for Ilhan” (94/40) are catnip