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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
19
Mixed:
11
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Mar 9, 2018
Season 16 Review:
It’s a kinder, gentler show that, at least in the first two-hour episode, jettisons Simon Cowell–style cutting commentary and more fully embraces positivity and uplift. Call it American Idol Disney, or The Voice: Wish Upon a Star Edition. ... The new Idol often may make you want to gag even while it’s coaxing tears out of your ducts.
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Jun 19, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The Tuesday programs are involving for the musical numbers, but the Wednesday installments resort to the lamest tricks to drag out the announcement of who is gone. The contestants' awkward group performances add little to the process and play like the worst of Las Vegas. [4 Sep 2002]
Jun 19, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Offering prefab middle-of-the-road stardom, "American Idol" is entertaining, but not for the reasons its producers like to pretend. The open secret that the show's creators and its fans choose to ignore is that the music and arrangements are trite, full of wannabe Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder wails. Originality is a losing strategy. But the series does have a stroke of commercial genius, as it shrewdly combines elements from a smattering of other series into one big marketable soup. It's "Survivor" with a soundtrack.
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Jun 19, 2013
Season 1 Review:
So much about the Fox series is unseemly, and I don't just mean the commercial-to-show ratio and the sponsor plugs, which have been downright obscene. "American Idol," a new hybrid of reality TV and beauty pageantry, represents some of the crudest aspects of both network TV and the pop-music industry. ... And yet, and yet. "American Idol" remains addictive TV. [4 Sep 2002]
Mar 8, 2018
Season 16 Review:
The new version is really just the old version, but a little sappier, a little more Disney-fied, a little more Americana-obsessed, and it's all, well, fine. It's not particularly good or particularly bad. It's just familiar. And familiar may be enough, depending on what you're looking for. But it's not special.
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Jun 19, 2013
Season 1 Review:
"American Idol" boasts two new wrinkles. First, the performances are so tightly edited that each singer gets barely a minute onstage. ... The second innovation: The contest is rigged. [21 Jun 2002]
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