WHO ARE PETER TRAVERS?

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers just might be the closest thing we have to William Shakespeare... or Carolyn Keene. It's only a theory, but I believe Mr. Travers is not one person, but at least three people with widely varying thoughts and ideas, as well as diversely different styles of writing.

Excerpt from Peter Travers' review of James C. Strouse's "Grace Is Gone" -

"Simplicity -- four-square, not sappy -- is rare in film. James C. Strouse had it in his script for Lonesome Jim. As writer and first-time director, he gives Grace Is Gone the quiet power to sneak up and floor you. A reserved father (John Cusack in a devastating change of pace) drives his young daughters, the wondrous Shelan O'Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, to a Florida theme park, unable to find words to tell them that their soldier mom has been killed in Iraq. That's it. No politics, no pleading. No artifice."

That was the entire review. Concise, straightforward, and very masculine. With the exception of the words "wondrous" and "artifice," it reads like somebody who writes copy. Or some hard-boiled smoker/alcoholic type non-writer who wears a fedora in public. An old-timer. Somebody who goes to the racetrack and coughs a lot. You get the picture. A sportswriter, maybe. Or somebody's dad. But definitely not a professional film critic.

Now let's look at "his" review of Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" -

"Cate Blanchett can do anything, even play Bob Dylan, but she can't save this creaky sequel to her star-making 1998 biopic of Elizabeth I. Fie on director Shekhar Kapur's visual and aural bombast and the script's soap-opera heart. Though the sixteenth-century queen is facing her greatest challenge -- from an armada attack by King Philip of Spain (Jordi Molla's performance comes direct from the Ministry of Funny Walks) -- she mostly moons over Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), who'd rather unbuckle his swash for lady-in-waiting Abbie Cornish. Ugh."

"Fie on director Shekhar Kapur's visual and aural bombast?" Snarky, girlie even - a completely different voice from the author of the "Grace Is Gone" review. A chick definitely ran this through her pink Underwood. Notice the choice to include the word, "Ugh." My guess? Fucking Sandra Tsing Loh was behind this one.

Next, let's turn to an excerpt from Travers' piece on James Gray's "We Own The Night" -

"With long takes and overhead shots that reduce humans to playthings of destiny, Gray's reach is daringly Shakespearean. For some critics, it's just conventional TV pap with delusions of grandeur and a lazy regard for period details. Or even more risible: fascist propaganda for a police state. You be the judge. Gray's first two films, Little Odessa and The Yards, threw me at first. It might take a second or third viewing to see what he's after. It's worth the effort."

"You be the judge?" Now, we're supposed to spend hard-earned cash to see a movie three times to decide if it plays more like a TV MOW or early Leni Riefenstahl? This doesn't read like any Peter Travers review I've ever read. But, then, neither do any of the others. The wordsmith who spit this one out never leaves his flat without a powdered wig. Either a barrister or a cabaret singer.

Dear Peter Travers,

If you are, as I suspect, several writers writing under one pseudonym, shame on you and you and you... If you do exist and are simply hiring ghostwriters to do your work for you, it is only a matter of time before you are outed as a charlatan. Repent now or prepare to suffer the slings and arrows of Criticide in the near future. We will find out!

If there really is just one of you and all of your reviews come from you and you alone, then I urge you to seek the help of a mental health professional immediately. There are medications out there that have done wonders for people with your condition. True, Multiple Personality Disorder cannot be cured, but it can be treated.

Salty Milkduds