Pan Sauce

On the art of the negative movie review and an anniversary celebration of one of the best bad reviews ever written.

Tomorrow is May 15, 2025 – the 20th anniversary, to all those who celebrate, of the greatest pan of a movie ever written: Anthony Lane’s takedown of “Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge of the Sith.”

It begins:

“Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. It sounds to me like the noise that emerges when you block one nostril and blow through the other, but to George Lucas it is a name that trumpets evil.”

And Lane proceeds from there, eviscerating what was considered in 2005 to be the very definition of a Pop Culture Event – a climactic fiction from which the entire civilized world was implicitly meant to take sustenance and strength – disemboweling the franchise of its dull pretentions and briefly restoring sanity and order via the cleansing lance of mockery.

 “The general opinion of ‘Revenge of the Sith’ seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes,’The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Attack of the Clones.’ True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.”

Rereading Lane’s piece today has me thinking about the art of the pan, and how it is an art.