I’ve twice read Alissa Simon‘s Variety review of Marc Forster‘s The Kite Runner (posted last Thursday after a Chicago Film Festival screening), and it feels so dry and dispassionate that a computer program could have written it. Trade reviews are supposed to assess the merits and demerits of a film (including how commercial it may turn out to be), but you can feel the presence of perspective, personality and even emotion in the Variety reviews by Todd McCarthy, Robert Koehler and Derek Elley. Simon seems to be saying that it’s a modest achievement, but offers no real hints about how she really and truly felt deep down.
