BOOK OF THE DAY: It's Only a MovieBy Mark Kermode, Random House, 344pp, £11.99
IN RECENT years, it has become fashionable to declare that the professional film critic is going the way of the chandler or the farrier. Now that the internet is abuzz with opinions on the latest cyborg thriller or Jennifer Aniston date-killer, we no longer need to hire snooty, supposed experts to tell us what to think. So the thinking goes.
Happily (well, happily for me), Mark Kermode is at hand to demonstrate why reviewers still matter. A heavily quiffed 46-year- old who favours Harrington bomber jackets and plays bass in a nifty skiffle band, Kermode first gained fame – you might say notoriety – as an expert on horror cinema and related atrocities.
Such is Kermode's enthusiasm for a certain 1970s shocker that, as this book reveals, a colleague refers to his monograph on that film as "everything you never wanted to know about The Exorcistbut were scared Mark was going to tell you anyway".
You might assume that It's Only a Movie'stitle is a slight misquote of a famously dismissive remark made by Alfred Hitchcock to Ingrid Bergman but, in fact, it references the tagline to Wes Craven's infamous 1972 bloodbath, The Last House on the Left.
Yet Kermode is nothing if not eclectic in his tastes. The British Film Institute's (BFI) website records that, in 1992, he listed Mary Poppinsand Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Sealamong his choices for the 10 greatest films ever made. When declaiming during his regular slot on BBC Radio – where he and Simon Mayo squabble like elderly ladies at the launderette – or, while standing in at the Observerfor Philip French, Kermode brings wit and lucidity to unpretentious examinations of high and low art.
Noting that Kermode has a PhD from a decent university (in horror literature, not film), his many admirers have longed for him to knock together a proper book. That Exorcistvolume, written for the BFI Modern Classics series, is first class, but it only runs to 128 pages. The time has come for a serious tome on one or more of his many enthusiasms: the general inadvisability of censorship; the magnificence of Ken Russell; the tedium of digital 3-D.
This is not that book. Arriving with a cover featuring the good doctor sandwiched between a chainsaw and (please try harder) a bucket of popcorn, It's Only a Movieproves to be an amusing but lightweight compilation of memorable incidents from the author's brilliant career.
A glance at the prologue suggests the book might turn out to be little more than half of a typical chat between Mayo and Kermode. All the regular catchphrases and running jokes from their slot are in place – nods to actor Jason Isaacs; quips about “Ikea Knightley” – and the prose style is so casually conversational it’s hard not to imagine Kermode’s north London vowels rattling round your brain.
The book picks up considerably when we get into the main body. Greatest hits, such as the occasion when German director Werner Herzog got shot during a television interview with Kermode, make lengthy appearances.
But there is also a great deal of dryly written, often hilarious new material on such matters as a disastrous adventure to Russia with fellow critic Nigel Floyd and a half-hearted attempt to forge a journalistic career in Los Angeles.
Still, It's Only a Moviefeels somewhat like a lost opportunity. Having proved we still need serious film critics, Kermode might have put more serious film criticism into his first full-length book.
Donald Clarke writes about film for The Irish Times
