And yet nobody's offering to compensate us for Richard Roeper's recommendations:
Hollywood film studio Sony-TriStar has reached a $1.5 million settlement over accusations it advertised movies using quotes from a fabricated film critic. In 2001 billboards and TV commercials featured sound bites praising the studio's movies from reviewer David Manning of The Ridgefield Press - but the journalist was invented by marketing staff at Sony-TriStar. Quotes attributed to Manning were used to promote Hollow Man, A Knight's Tale, The Patriot, The Animal and Vertical Limit - but film fans can now demand a refund for cinema tickets purchased for these movies.
If I was Sony, I'd have fought for an exception for those last three movies. If you bought a ticket to The Animal, you don't deserve your money back, and I don't care who talked you into it.
If they would have just implemented my original idea and attached any occupied theater showing 'The Animal' to a robot-driven 18 wheeler that would proceed to the nearest deep body of water, drive in, and sink, we wouldn't be in this position.
In the end, it would have been so much cheaper to have bought some real film critics.
They have integrity, and would never betray a source.