Reading Richard Schickel’s review Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wit’s End, I feel moved to enter the perennial debate about critical versus popular sensibilities—don’t ask me why, just masochistic, I guess—with a single observation: Thank God I’m not a critic. No, really . . . thank God! I’ve flirted with the idea from time to time, I can write well when I think about it (I write for a living, for Pete’s sake) and I love movies. I can tell a good movie from a bad one, understand a little bit about movie production and aesthetics, and my Netflix queue has Important Films written all over it.

Nevertheless, being a movie critic seems to me to be a really bad job, and I base this judgment on all the whining I hear from critics like Schickel at this time of year. Here’s what he says about the movie’s conclusion: “It is, shall we say, an open-ended ending. God help us, we silently whimper. You mean they’re leaving the door open for another one? And another. And?” Reading that I want to answer with the old Lone Ranger/Tonto joke, updated for these politically-correct times—whaddya mean we, Mr. Critic Man? As a non-critic, simple lover-of-movies—a cine-phile—I don’t have to see every movie that comes out, and thank goodness for that! I’M a Protestant—whoops, a cinephile—and I can do with my time what I want. I didn’t see either of the previous Pirate movies in the theatres, but I might go see this one. Or, I might not! It’s my time, my money, and I can spend it any way I want.

Unfortunately for Mr. Schickel’s delicate sensibilities, a lot of people this time of year choose to spend theirs on going to see Pirates 3, and Spiderman 3, and similar malodorous fare, and some of these same people might even spend their hard-earned time and money reading Time. Get over it, it’s that time of year, move on. I would just drop dead if critics like Schickel would get together and make a pact to spend only half the ink and energy they usually do spewing the same old poor-me-it’s-the-popcorn-movie-season drivel. Then they could spend the rest coming up with unique and well-thought-out criticism. Who knows? Maybe we could rejuvenate criticism in our time.

On second thought, maybe not.