How to write like Pauline Kael

The other day in The Globe and Mail, TV critic John Doyle said that some of the people in his trade have ambitions to become the Pauline Kael of television.  That got me thinking about offering them tips on how to emulate the famous New Yorker movie critic:

Be nasty.  In reviewing the movie of the musical A Little Night Music, she said, "Hal Prince directs as if he had never seen a movie!"

Use the second person in the present tense.  Don't say "I didn't like it"; say "You don't like it."

Appeal to artistic snobbery.  She said that Bugsy Malone is "only for people who like putting ribbons on dogs." What if I like putting ribbons on dogs?

Use attention-grabbing overstatements.  She famously compared the Last Tango in Paris premiere to the premiere of the Stravinsky ballet The Rite of Spring.  A bit premature, wasn't she?

Invent new words.  Grease is a "klutzburger."

Don't be afraid of spoilers.  In her review of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining she spoiled what she admitted was the movie's scariest scene, which involves the sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." (If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.") All this so she could reach the clever conclusion, "All work and no play makes Stanley a dull boy too." That's a sore point for me because back in 1980 I read the review before seeing the movie.

Generalize aggressively.  Write about "why movies today are so bad."

Be vulgar.  She called the True Grit sequel Rooster Cogburn and the Lady "a belch from the Nixon era"; her review of the movie version of Annie said, "The other group that might like this movie is the fetishists:  it has big-girl and little-girl panties."

Make cultural references that half your readers won't get.  Shelley Duvall in The Shining "looks more like a Modigliani than ever."

Be alert to "confidence" in actors and even directors.  In reviewing the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, she said that "the director, Phil Kaufman, provides such confident professionalism that you sit back in the assurance that every spooky nuance you're catching is just what was intended." Well, she did anyway.

Use overelaborate expressions.  Don't say "one of the most"; say "one of the two or three most."

Be sarcastic.  In her pan of Four Friends, she said: "There's a wholesome, beefy moralness in Steve Tesich's script, and Arthur Penn does his best to bring out its hearty bouquet." And all smart moviegoers hate that, of course.

Speculate about the filmmakers' intentions.  When she panned the Funny Girl sequel Funny Lady, she said: "They weren't just going to make a musical sequel--they were going to knock us out! (And they were going to outdo Cabaret, besides.)"

In using adjectival description, be spontaneous, stylish, "and"-less. Tex "is oddly quiet, tepid, soft." Robert De Niro in True Confessions "seems flaccid, pre-occupied." George Cukor's direction of Adam's Rib "is too arch, too consciously, commercially clever, but it's also spirited, confident."

Write overlong sentences.  Her review of Dressed to Kill alone has two sentences each over sixty words long!

Don't get me started on how to write like John Simon!