The Good: Nice Photographs, Backs a Project to Death, Generally Informative
The Bad: Many opinions, Quality of writing, Depth
The Basics: The epitome of average magazines filled with glossy pictures and average writing, I'm enjoying a free subscription to Entertainment Weekly, but won't pay for it.
Once upon a time, I had a free subscription to Entertainment Weekly. At that time, I wrote the following review. If I were to write the full review today, I probably would pan it much more mightily as the internet has made much of the information from this magazine about seven days behind the current news cycle! Regardless, here for posterity is my commentary on Entertainment Weekly!
Entertainment Weekly is not, as one might have suspected from the title, a serious magazine. It's talking about entertainment for Toast's sake! What were you expecting from it? Reporting by Edward R. Murrow?! No, you're expecting to be entertained and/or informed about goings on in entertainment.
First off, Entertainment Weekly can't stay ahead of the internet for the latest news and movie rumors. No competition. In fact, the print media might as well stop bothering to try; it looks fooling trying to contend with the quality, quantity, and quickness of online spoiler groups.
So, what good is Entertainment Weekly? Well, it looks good. The pictures are often nice, not the typical two promotional photos for a movie or television show you see plastered all over. They have a professional set of photographers who do an excellent job.
The editors are excellent, too. Having sat down and read my free issues thus far cover to cover, I've yet to find a spelling error, punctuation error, or grammatical error. Sound like I'm stretching? Well, pick up pretty much any other magazine (save The New Yorker and The Nation) and see if you can say the same. While the vocabulary level is ideal for anyone in fifth grade or above, I return to my thesis of this review; it's entertainment, not the Journal of Rocket Science!
So, what is truly good about Entertainment Weekly? Why am I bothering to actually recommend it? Simple: it has what the internet often lacks: analysis. Entertainment Weekly, while it processes a lot of raw information (interviews, in depth articles on the writers/producers/directors of today's Hollywood scene), it has some pretty solid analysis. They have articles tying together broader themes in television (like the Women of television dramas, etc.) and fairly good analysis of current trends in entertainment.
I like that when they get into a show, they back it. I'm referring to Alias now. I've gotten into Alias; the previews suckered me in and thus far it has been the only new show that hasn't disappointed me. Entertainment Weekly disappointed me by putting the terrible, just plain bad Star Trek: Enterprise crew on the cover as opposed to doing an Alias cover, but . . .
Looking for a radical magazine that is predicting the downfall of boy bands and the end of the Blonde Revolution? This magazine isn't it, after all, they have to sell copies and they're going for the obvious hits.
The final analysis: it's not a bad magazine. It fails where every other magazine fails: slow information and limited, pathetically infantile vocabulary without any real flair for writing, but makes small points for actually being interesting, mildly insightful on current trends in the industry and photographs that are pretty to look at. Sigh. It's good for what it is; a magazine on entertainment, I suppose they can't help it if the entertainment industry is vacuous and dumbed down. I suppose when The New Yorker starts doing the All Glossy Photograph and Entertainment Analysis Issue(s), I'll gladly rate that high and return to turn my recommend into a not recommend, but until then, I'll guiltily take an hour a week to read Entertainment Weekly . . . at least while it's free.
4/10
For other magazine reviews of mine, please check out the index page!
© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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