Any film that is met with general acclaim and enthusiasm is also bound to be met with something else: a backlash. It's usually a combination of people who genuinely just didn't like the movie, and people who bristle at its popularity and go out of their way not to like it. You can tell the latter group because the more awards the film wins, the more they hate the movie -- as if being lauded somehow makes the film worse.

I've never understood this reasoning. "I watched it a few months ago and it was terrible, but then it won a Golden Globe, so I watched it again and magically it became even more terrible!" Is that how it goes? What kind of sense does that make? Likewise, when people complain about a movie being "overrated" or "overhyped" -- well, that's not the movie's fault, is it? Don't go into a film with a chip on your shoulder just because its promotions department went overboard, or because your friends won't shut up about it.

Slumdog Millionaire's backlash is starting to crescendo, with some of the film's detractors becoming even more incensed now that it won all those Golden Globes on Sunday. (The fact that some people consider the Golden Globe a legitimate award, instead of a meaningless gesture by swag-influenced, celebrity-interviewing junketeers, is a topic for another day.) Our colleagues at SpoutBlog are proud of the fact that they disliked Slumdog before it was cool to do so, and Karina Longworth notes today that while their anti-Slumdog sentiments were once met with fury and outrage, lately they've been getting more comments from people who agree with them. Apparently it's safe now to come out as a Slumdog non-fan.

In a similar vein, Scanners' Jim Emerson has been picking apart The Dark Knight to explain why it is, in his view, such an awful, awful movie. His posts have gotten plenty of comments from like-minded viewers, when just six months ago they would have yielded nothing but death threats from anonymous, semi-literate Internet cowards. (To be fair, he's gotten some of those, too.)

I think most people who dislike a movie come by that opinion naturally -- i.e., they watched it with as open mind as they could, and they honestly just didn't care for it. Nothing wrong with that. Even supposedly "great" films don't appeal to everyone. We film critics are always having our motives called into question by people who disagree with us ("You just don't like dogs!" "You're just racist!" "You just hate Adam Sandler!"), so I know it's annoying when someone tries to tell you "why" you didn't like a movie. I usually give people the benefit of the doubt: If they say they didn't like it, and explain what they felt was wrong with it, I'll take their word for it.

But when a critic starts his review by talking about other reviews, and how he disagrees with them, it's easy to conclude that those other reviews were a factor in why he didn't like the movie -- otherwise, why would he mention them? Or when Defamer's Stu Van Airsdale last week called a critic "contrarian" (i.e., being different just for the sake of being different) for including American Teen in his top 10 list, even though American Teen got positive reviews from 70% of critics -- well, what that really means is that Van Airsdale didn't like the movie and is apparently suspicious of anyone who claims to feel otherwise.

The point is, when you start couching your opinions in terms of "not as good as people think" or "overrated" or "not worth the hype," it makes it sound like you based your opinion not on what's actually up there on the screen (which is all that should matter), but on external factors. Even if that's not the case -- even if you formed your opinion without taking others' views into account -- you don't help yourself any by comparing your opinion to theirs.

Who cares if you liked the movie as much as, or less than, other people? Just say how you feel, man. Whether it puts you in the vast majority (and thus at risk of not being "edgy") or in the distinct minority (and liable to be called an elitist), you gotta own your opinions. If you honestly didn't like Slumdog Millionaire, hey, more power to you. But so what if other people do? They're not all just "sheep," going along with the crowd -- no more than you're a sheep for going along with the backlash crowd. I see no reason why a movie's popularity should make anyone ANGRY, except maybe for the executives at rival studios.