When this SFist attended a recent press sceening of the animated feature Monster House, something wonderful happened. A writer we've always respected made a pointed crack about "movie reviewers from the dailies", which inspired another film journalist to darkly mutter "Uh, I don't like them animated cartoons", a joking impression of Nemesis of SFist and San Francisco Chronicle movie reviewer Mick LaSalle. After the laughter had subsided, several of us recounted our favorite idiotic lines from his reviews (ours was, of course, his proud announcement of ignorance on the provenance of Assault on Precinct 13). It was an exchange that left this SFist glowing like we do after an especially good massage. There's nothing that brings people together like self-righteous mockery, what?

We were thinking about our Monster House moment when we saw this Boing Boing post ripping LaSalle a new one after his blockheaded review of Monster House. Our favorite bit:

I know there's no accounting for taste, and if someone likes the animation in Monster House or A Scanner Darkly, I'm envious that they're so easily amused. But LaSalle's review reveals such a supreme lack of understanding about animation that true aficionados of the artform and talented industry pros are dumbfounded by LaSalle's astoundingly clueless review.

And that's the thing about LaSalle, right there -- the issue isn't necessarily that we agree or disagree with his reviews, the problem is that they're so deliberately obtuse that they're almost shocking. Look, we're not asking for Cahiers du Cinéma, here, but we do expect a little less idiocy from the film reviewer of what claims to be a major metropolitan publication. Is that too much to ask? We're starting to worry that it is.

Thanks to Isaac for pointing us toward this link!