Is there something you have read, watched, listened to, eaten, visited, played or otherwise experienced this year that you think is so bad that you want to discourage others from experiencing it? If so, what and why?
To give you some examples, here are excerpts from three unfavorable reviews published in The New York Times about works that debuted in 2023.
According to Wesley Morris, this year’s remake of “The Little Mermaid” was, well, bad:
The new, live-action “The Little Mermaid” is everything nobody should want in a movie: dutiful and defensive, yet desperate for approval. It reeks of obligation and noble intentions. Joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink — they’re missing. The movie is saying, “We tried!” Tried not to offend, appall, challenge, imagine. A crab croons, a gull raps, a sea witch swells to Stay Puft proportions: This is not supposed to be a serious event. But it feels made in anticipation of being taken too seriously. Now, you can’t even laugh at it.
Jon Caramanica said Sphere, a new venue that opened in September in Las Vegas, provided a “strangely vulnerable and inelegant setup” for a U2 concert, the inaugural show in the space:
Impressively detailed and lightly shocking, Sphere registers in intensity if not scale — at 366 feet, it is not even one of the 40 tallest buildings in Las Vegas. But on some level, its power is grounded simply in the novelty of the shape, even in a town that already has a pyramid and a palace and a castle. (Dolan has already indicated plans to build similar structures in other cities.)
But inside it is, simply, a concert venue, albeit one with distinct advantages and challenges. In dry stretches, when the space between the band and the huge screen and the crowd was palpable, the result paralleled the airy emptiness of a corporate convention gig. In a stadium show, you can almost obscure a low-enthusiasm performance — here there was nowhere to hide.
And Mike Isaac wrote in July that he was still unsure of Threads, the social media network from Meta that made its debut this summer:
After playing with it for a few days, I’m starting to wonder if I can kick my Twitter addiction by replacing it with a “friendlier” social network crafted by Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief.
So far, I’m enjoying it. But it definitely feels like a stripped-down version of Twitter. No hashtags, heavy on the influencers — and the worst part is, a lot of the people in my replies don’t seem to get my jokes that usually do well on Twitter.
Students, read one of the reviews above, and then tell us:
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What work that debuted in 2023 would you write a negative review about to warn others against experiencing, whether because it was poorly done, shallow, dull, overrated or just plain terrible? You can choose a book, a movie, music, a TV show, a live performance, fashion, architecture, dance, a work of visual art, a video game, a podcast, a restaurant or even a piece of technology.
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What was so bad about the experience? What details did you find most disappointing? Why?
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Why, in your opinion, is this work worth talking about? What ideas or questions does it raise about the world or the time we are living in? What lessons can we take away from its terribleness?
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What could you say to convince others that the experience should be avoided?
Write a short negative review (what critics call “a pan”), taking all these questions into consideration, and then post it in the comments. When you are finished, read what other students have posted and reply to, or “recommend,” some of the most interesting.
