The Critical Drinker and Shallow Conservative Critique 

Painting Oda and One Piece as a conservative anti-woke work can truly only come from someone who has absolutely no idea what this story actually is.

A really annoying thing about The Critical Drinker is how every once in a while RU-vid thinks I want to watch it

There's a reason he isn't named thinker.

I just want to point out that the whole point of Picard’s argument with the female admiral is that you’re supposed to side with him about the state of the Federation and he got in the final word. So Critical Drinker missed the point by a thousand light years.

Man beats up half a dozen bad guys in a movie: eh, suspension of disbelief. Woman beats up one bad guy in a movie: WOMEN CAN'T DO THAT!

The comment about how it's because of Japanese culture that men are stronger then women in the show is wild to me. There are so many anime and manga where women, usually teenage girls, destroy fully grown men in a fight easily.

It's funny that the Critical Drinker cites the Netflix Cowboy Bebop series as being "woke", therefore "bad", when in reality it's actually less woke than the original anime. The original anime, especially at the time, was _super_ left leaning, and explicitly so.

I can now not un-hear how drinker ends almost every sentence by emphasizing the second to last syllable and lengthening the final one. It drives me mad.

i laughed out loud at the "unlike other shows the men aren't getting outsmarted by the women" because one of the first things i thought about live action one piece is that nami carries the team's one and only brain cell. this isn't a critique of live action one piece--i loved it--it's just how this particular team's dynamic comes across.

CDs comments at 26:55 is absolutely bonkers to me. The idea that you can’t relate to character because they don’t act like someone you know is crazy. I don’t know anyone who actually acts like, let’s say, Spike from Cowboy Bebop. But that’s exactly why he’s an interesting character! He’s a strange self destructive guy, but he’s well written and three dimensional. Obviously characters need to be relatable in some sense yes, but if every character acts like someone you know they’ll never surprise you. What a boring way to see media.

Imagine watching Star Trek, a utopian future where everyone is equal and then missing the point of that to get angry at women

hilarious to me that he uses original mulan and star trek in particular as an example of media that doesn’t have leftist political messaging

Critical drinker lost me with his across the spiderverse review. He praises the movie for like 99% of the video then suddenly drops the whole “Peter is being humiliated and undermined in order to make miles look better” shit. Despite the fact that Peter being a dorky father of his daughter with Mary Jane is basically fan service for Spider-Man fans. Also completely ignores the fact that Peter is clearly still a badass since he was the only one who was able to catch up with miles (besides Miguel) and has a whole ass convo with him. It truly felt like he just needed to find something “woke” to complain about to satisfy his fans.

The way he speaks every word through his teeth, like he has lockjaw or something, is like nails on a chalkboard for me. A shallow critique of my own, I know.

I caught him on a twitch stream once and he really did low key admit he doesn't really fairly "critique" these movies he just tears down "liberal" movies because "thats what they do to us"

In his recent video about the Oscars a lot of his fans were saying that since Boy and the Heron won Best Animated Feature, somehow it was some gigantic anti-woke win. Ah yes. A movie directed, animated and brought to life by a feminist and environmentalist who was constantly trolled for his publicly left-wing views and even criticised the Orange Man as a “terrible choice” is somehow a win for “anti-wokeness”.

"They made One Piece right-wing, as Oda intended." Do people take this unripe brain seriously?

I think its funny how drinker complains about a woman beating up a man being “unrealistic” but in john wick 4 there is a character who is blind and is able to take out dozens of trained killers without breaking a sweat(something FAR more unbelievable than a woman beating a man) And yet as far as i remember drinker never had a problem with that and most likely just “suspended his disbelief” And his argument doesn’t even really make sense considering that im pretty sure he likes kill bill, which by his own logic is probably the worst case.💀 (Bride killing an entire dojo of ninjas)

There’s a film called “Prey” which he made fun of before it even came out and when the film turned out to be successful both critically and commercially,he decided to change the title of his video…Same thing happened when he made fun of Glass Onion…This dude is a clown and so is the rest of the circus called “EFAP”…

In the name of realism, all fights should look like MMA.

Using a picture of Eiji Aonuma when talking about Oda is the funniest thing

I unsubbed from drinker after this video. His "the message" critique became lazy and tacked on for every video. This video was just the last tiny matchstick that broke the camels back for me.

The Drinker lost me with his review of Barbie. Ive never seen someone miss the point that bad.

It's quite sad that they still haven't found a new meme besides the screaming person. Also, the drinker calling himself an anarchist is the joke of the century.

I will say the live action Mulan accidentally changes the message to "women can are just as good as men and can be heroes if they get the chance" to "special women with superior genes and abnormal psychical ability can compete with and outdo men" I don't understand why they had to put the chi thing in because it feels more like a way of justifying her talent when the entire point is that women don't need to be special to be as good as men. That's why in the original she's just a regular girl with no special gifts. You might say she's smarter than the men but I read that as her simply rejecting toxic masculinity and it's obsession with strength over wit. The men can be just as clever as her if they reject their gender roles and stereotypes, which is how they buy Mulan enough time to save the day when they decide to put on drag(a very literally breaking of gender expectations).

The drinker takes it as a given that women will never beat a man in a fight even when the woman has trained more. Maybe he should look at what's happening with Audrey Jimenez.

Listening to Drinker describe someone else as "a completely unlikable arsehole" had me laughing.

I liked Drinker for a while because was dunking on trash that I already thought was trash, but over time it became obvious that he framed almost EVERYTHING in terms of feminism and diversity. It got really boring and he just seemed more and more like a hateful, narrowminded person. I'm not surprised by any of his takes in this video haha.

The Critical Drinker was once called a dork by a woman when he was younger and has been on a war path since.

Put drinker in a ring with a female mma fighter and he’ll get to test his theory of men being naturally stronger first hand

The thing I dislike the most about Drinker's take is that he sometimes gets extremely close to a good critique of a movie or tv show, only to then fall back to a conservatives perspective. Take Mulan: I agree with Drinker that her having "a lot of chi" in the live action adaptation was not a good idea. The cartoon did not have this "predestination" angle and Mulan was just a regular young woman. She was smart and resourceful, she had a strong sense of self-sacrifice, but there was no "inherent supernatural quality" with her - aside for a magical companion in Mushu, but he was not the key to her rise as a character and he mostly served as comedic relief. I believe this is a valid critique to the live action movie and a good reason to consider the original animated movie as more inspiring: every girl could look up to Mulan and be inspired by her determination and resourcefulness. But instead of pointing this out and maybe diving a little deeper, Drinker goes on a tirade about his idea of a girl boss and how woke culture is destroying media and how men are all inferior to Mulan... Like, you almost made a very valid observation, there!

I will never forget the time he thought Oldboy (2003) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were both Japanese. Really amazes me how popular he is.

You just need to see how hard he rips into anything marvel and just how easy he goes into “lady ballers”. It’s so obvious he’s a right winger and doesn’t want to piss off his anti woke audience.

His delivery is so annoying; it is like by the end of every sentence he is fighting off oxygen deprivation.

You know what'd piss TCD off? Bayonetta. Kicking a man AND a god's butt.

An earlier version of this video included some silent footage at 43:55 that was taken from a Drinker video. It supposed to be a clip of Drinker complaining about "modern audiences" that I was contrasting with Benedict's statements about the same thing. Somehow the audio got dropped when I was exporting the file, so I've edited it out of the live version and it'll be updated once it finishes processing. Apologies for the mistake!

Drinker comes off as a dude who was beaten up by a girl at one point in his life and has never gotten over it.

The Critical Drinker fits into that meme, where the therapist asks him "is the woke revolution here in the room with us now?"

It's weird that people like him think movies and stuff suddenly went woke in the last few years. By their standards, stories have always been woke because they have always tackled social politics. But when it's well written and makes for a good story they will praise it. And when it's badly written (or has certain "woke themes") they will slam it as woke infested garbage instead of actually pointing out it's flaws and meaningfully critique it. This makes their agenda quite clear. They're not media critics, they're political influencers.

Whenever he says "men are bigger, faster, and stronger" the DK rap starts playing in my head

Wait till drinker finds out about the trans guy character where everyone respects his identity

The rejection of women beating up men due to realism is so funny to me because watching almost any action movie involving hand to hand combat between 2 men is so clearly beyond realism. Movies like The Bourne Series, James bond, Mission impossible, John wick, etc, feature lengthy hand to hand combat scenes where even the 1v1 man on man combat scenes have both characters persevering through fight ending, crippling injuries, with inhuman endurance; as well as remarkably quick recovery time after the fight scene is concluded.

I live in Japan and his attempts to review anything Japanese always boils my blood. He DOESN'T understand the culture and its ups and downs its history and clearly just uses everything to push his agenda. While blaming others of the same. Truly a grifter.

The expectations of male stereotypes are honestly one of the things I hate most about being one. I don't see any of myself in those types of stoic emotionally closed-off badasses, and I've spent far too much of my life feeling like a miserable failure for failing to live up to such standards.

Let's just take this moment to acknowledge that critical drinker would absolutely hate the animated Mulan if it came out today. He'd likely highlight the scene where Yao misses the rope, and would say, "in this movie, male characters are all bumbling idiots who can't accomplish anything, while Mulan is hyper competent and always saves the day despite her companions incompetence. Edit: you guys have done a great job showing you're not offended by other people's opinions. ~Jack Saint. Edit 2: I am noticing that a lot of you are leaving comments that make arguments I've already addressed. So I'm gonna periodically update this one with text from other comments I left. For those of you trying to counter me on this, almost none of your responses are actually worthwhile to me. All of them miss the point, and none of them actually counter what I've said. The fact is that the criticisms of other female heros he's presented to us are not levied consistently. Many of the things he dislikes about other female heros applies to the female heros he likes. So let's go through some of this. The reason why he doesn't dislike Mulan, is because of nostalgia. Bear with me, cause I am terrible with names. 1) Mulan manages to defeat her teacher during be a man. Sure, she has trained for it, but in another analysis CD essentially claimed that a woman would not be able to out-compete a man like this, even with training. Yet, with Mulan it's OK. 2) when Mulan disarms the bad guy, sorry, I cannot remember his name, it's seen as being due to her ingenuity. But disarming a seasoned sword fighter with a folding fan would take a ridiculous amount of strength. Something which would be caught and talked about if the movie came out today. 3) if we are willing to accept Mulan being so competent due to training, have you ever considered the fact that Captain Marvel was trained by both the US and Kree militaries? 4) why is fighting with ingenuity over raw physical strength bad when Captain Marval does it, but ok when Mulan does it? Captain Marval couldn't beat her main male rival in a competition of strength and hand to hand combat. She only ever beat him by using her powers. She recognized at the end that she could only beat him using her own skills rather than fighting on his terms. Not to worry though, I don't expect anyone to actually listen to what I'm saying here. It's just gonna continue with the whataboutisms, and other such deflections. I'll admit that ingenuity isn't really the correct term. Sure enough. But the fact of the matter is that she realized she couldn't take him without using her powers. She had spent the whole movie thinking she had to be able to handle him with raw physical strength, in hand to hand combat. It was a major blow to her sense of self worth. And the story was about overcoming that. By ingenuity, I meant that she fought within her means, using the tools she had that he lacked, instead of letting others dictate how she should go about the fight. The struggle of earning her power is irrelevant here for two reasons. 1) CD has already made claims that women cannot compete with men, even with training. This can be seen in the video we are commenting on. 2) It's still not being applied consistently. Plenty of characters got their power without any struggle or sacrifice. Captain America saw Steve undergoing training, sure. But he saw no advancement from the training. His only shining moments before getting the serum was that bit with the flag and the moment with the grenade. Both of these stem from previously established character traits and did not come about due to training. He had no physical attributes, or combat skill after training. That was all the serum. Superman has powers cause he landed on a planet with a yellow sun. Spider man got bit by a spider. Now, you could make an argument that sacrifice/struggle came about anyway. After all, each of the characters mentioned above had something to lose, and/or lost something after gaining powers. Think uncle Ben, for example. But different characters have different struggles. Carol Danvers is the most powerful character in her movie, as we can both agree. But is the conflict she was dealing with one that could be dealt with through raw power alone? Not a chance. Most of the film saw her against her own emotions and self worth, or against a foe that could be anyone. Her view on the conflict at hand in her movie was a primary struggle. One that is not easy to deal with. It's not an easy feat to look at your core fundamental beliefs and change your mind, after all.

I have watched some of his videos in the past. What bothered me from the start, however, was his romanticization of alcoholism and later his transparent and permanent dislike of women . You can assert that it's partially satire, but as time went on, it became pretty clear that maybe the guy should talk to a therapist.

These guys that say a movie is bad before its even released just based on their identity politics while claiming that identity politics is bad, lol. Why not wait till it is released and then critique it. You could say you dont think it will be good but they are more definitive with their language and saying it is bad even when they havent seen it.

"the anarchist in my wants the rightwing propaganda outlet succeed" beyond parody, lol

why does TCD always end a sentence sounding like hes so angry that hes holding back tears? holy fuck it is so grating

Honestly it makes me happy that so many people are speaking out against the drinker and how terrible a critic he really is it's only a matter of time until he does something incredibly stupid or controversial that makes his audience turn on him or some kind of scandal comes up behind the scenes because it's a trend i'm noticing with a lot of these right wing grifters as of late

"Men gets beaten up by women is unrealistic." But he forgot that half the time the women are trained fighters or have powers going against thugs or going after someone with same skills as them.

The great thing about the drinker is how you can become one too! Take a shot everytime he says "woke" and you'll be a mumbling alcoholic after 4 videos

Basically Drinker's opinion on men and women in film seems to boil down to "men depicted in movies are exceptional examples of men, and women depicted in movies are exceptions to 'real life' women."

I stopped watching Critical Drinker after his Midsommar review. Don't think I've ever seen some miss the point of the movie as much as him.

So his whole schtick is a "drunk" act with misinformation? CinemaSins is the sober version of him.

31:57 when he's explaining why he likes the animated Mulan movie, Drinker says it teaches us that "a person's worth isn't defined by the size of their muscles", but he routinely gets upset about women defeating men in fights because women necessarily have smaller muscles than men and brings out charts and diagrams showing muscle size.

But have you considered how cool it is to be in your 40s wearing shades indoors with a bottle of whiskey in hand

Critical Drinker doesn't understand the point of the movies he's critiquing? In other news, water is wet.

Hypocritical Drinker is what I like to call him.

I get weirded out when reactionary types try to funnel down movie fights between men and women to just "stronger person wins." It's like they've never heard of agility, dexterity, or stealth. More over, weaponry usually evens the playing field dramatically, since it doesn't matter how much muscle mass you have if she can just slit your throat or shoot you. It's grade school playground logic to just default to "strength wins everything." I'm very tempted to say none of these guys have been in an actual fight, and certainly none of them has been in a fight with a woman trained in fighting.

Me: watches one Jordan Peterson lecture. RU-vid for six consecutive months: How about some old guy screaming about the "M-She-U" on stream, and the worst comment section in the history of telecommunications?

More like Critical Grifter.

He's going to get really pissed off at future One Piece arcs, Skypiea is heavily against the idea of conservative religious groups for example. And possibly Nami not being a reward for Luffy at all and her own established character.

Favorite Critical Drinker moment (was a while ago so I might have some details wrong) was when he parroted that line about how "Japan's film industry is doing great because they're not political" and when asked for some Japanese movies he liked he stuttered, said he didn't watch any but that he heard Shin Godzilla (a movie with a ton of explicit political satire), Parasite (not Japanese, also explicitly anti-capitalist) and Squid Game (not Japanese, not a movie, explicitly anti-capitalist) were all good. Edit: I was wrong. He said Oldboy, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Battle Royale (which the host came up with and he agreed with). None of which are new, only one of which is Japanese so the point still stands that he was talking out of his ass. Just like I was, I guess.

2010s commentary: “Japan is misogynistic, and that’s bad!” 2020s commentary: “Japan is misogynistic, and that’s good!” Sometimes things do go from bad to worse.

Hey, wish I could watch this video, but Critical Drinker is just too unbearable to listen to.

I used to watch Drinker way back in the day. Unsubbed from him like 3 years ago, have not regretted it once.

Why the fuck does drinking skeptic talk like that? Its like if an announcer from WatchMojo was doing a drunken macho man randy savage impression.

Remember when Chris Ray Gun said he was offered a big deal by conservative funders to make his content explicitly conservative, but he said no? Critical Drinker just so happened to blow up after this revelation and 100% was a benefactor in that deal, which is why he so heavily pushes Sound of Freedom. Like so many other conservative channels, his popularity is inorganic and propped up by millionaire donors

I still remember when the ROTTMNT Movie, one of the best animated movies from the current decade, released, Drinker & his lackeys insulted the film in a livestream JUST BECAUSE APRIL'S SKIN COLOR (worst part is that they didn't seem aware about the existance of the show & that movie was just the finale for said show)

i used to like critical drinker, but then he said something positive about the daily wire's production company and the absolute trash they push out and i was like "whoa, i thought you were above this political bs?" that he would look past the absolute garbage just because it fit with his narrative really soured me on his ability to analyze and criticize things objectively and i unsubbed from his channel.

imagine when he find out that one of Oda's desires was to portrait women as more than just romantic partners in manga culture, he wanted to lift the women roles in manga stories when he started one piece...

Ironic that he cites the original cowbow bebop as "anti woke" or an example of what he wants, and then complains about women kicking mens ass. As if Faye Valentine isnt right there, kicking ass.

Drinker going to be pissed when Luffy and Bon Clay hit it off in season 2 or 3. Oda is pretty pro LGBT.

All of these "anti woke" guys have all become the thing they said they hated, someone who judges movies and shows based solely on politics

"how could a women ever beat up a man" gives me the same vibes as a random dude saying he could beat a world class female athlete just because he's a guy 😂

It is really something for a guy who melts down every time he sees a woman failing to conform to traditional gender roles in a film or TV show insisting that normal men just don't show emotion. The lack of self awareness is unreal.

I watched him a ton. He had some solid takes, but oh boy recently the man hates everything and anything that even features a woman or someone who isn't straight or white. It's genuinely aggravating, because I feel like hes also corrupting the nicer youtubers I used to watch, like Tyrone Magnus, and inducting them into his "anti woke" cult that he pushes every Friday night. Don't get me wrong, I'm also against forced representation that sacrifices good stories, but the Drinker just finds those issues in everything even when its not there.

I come back to this video every week, just to enjoy it again and again. Great video, I'm very glad somebody is calling out Critical Drinker and their entire conservative circle of "critique" for lacking actual critique and just screaming "go woke or go broke"

Drinker wants some of those sweet conservative dollars. He probably wants daily wire to make movies of his spy books.

real rich that he references "the anarchist in me" despite the fact that if he had a conversation with a real anarchist he'd call the cops

there has ALWAYS been disparity between critical and audience scores on MANY films. That's WHY they are separated

"The men are actually allowed to kick ass, and make decisions, and hold their own. Instead of exist purely to get outfought and outsmarted by their female counterparts at every opportunity." Okay I'm already sensing Drunk idiot never actually seen either the One Piece live action or the Cowboy Bebop live action. Because saying this is hilarious seeing how I recall Faye (from Cowboy Bebop) only ever fighting in all of ONE episode which she lost no less then proceeded to get restrained by the male characters. Pretty much every other fight in that show was done by Spike (the male lead) from what I remember. One Piece on the otherhand I recall pirate captain Alvida taking over a pirate ship and whopping a bunch of male characters as well as having her entirely male crew (from what I recall) being completely scared and subservient to her. Then there's Nami beating up a bunch of marine cadets. She even beats a dude whose outfit she stole twice. As well as beating various of Buggy's sidekicks. Zorro got knocked out by one of Kuro's female crew members and lost and gets humiliated every time he tries to fight his female friend Kuina. So it's ironic Drunk idiot is claiming this when the male characters actually lost more fights and got humiliated to a worse degree by the female characters in One Piece live action than Cowboy Bebop live action.

Seeing how Conservatives analyze media is always fascinating. It almost never makes sense and is always filled with contempt, passive aggressiveness, fear mongering, and the most superficial interpretations.

the critical drinker feels like a parody of bad youtube review channels

As a man I am so happy all of you other fellas all saw some of that absolute wildness CD was spewing, and instantly knew he was bs. It literally made me fear for the future of masculinity, how crazy toxic that personality is.

One thing about the drinker is that he always blames the woke culture when the movie/game is bad, but if you swap the gender of the characters, those movies/games would still be bad. The more of his videos I watch, the less water his opinions hold.

What stands out to me about these kind of film bros is that they don't even seem to actually like movies; it's just that you can engage in the culture without any outstanding knowledge or skill. As long as you know the talking points, you can make a personality (even a career) out of it without having anything that insightful to say.

I don't know if this is something Jose touches upon, but YMS points out a relevant issue with CD. CD claims to be a critic who loves movies and uses broad strokes to paint years as good or bad for movies, but he doesn't actually watch that many movies. His media diet consists of blockbusters and whatever Disney puts out, he doesn't go to festivals, he doesn't cover any foreign films, it's just whatever's trending at the moment.

Average Critical Drinker subscriber: "We hate that media now shows that being a different colour and being gay is a beautiful thing just as being white and straight. HOW DARE THEY!!!! WHY CAN'T MEDIA JUST BE STALE AND LIKE IT WAS WHEN I WAS A KID 😭 Watches a film about military dudes with beards fighting in Afghanistan: THIS IS THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!

The comments section of his videos made me embarrassed that I ever thought he was a good critic. Nobody throws hissy fits over minorities in movies the way conservatives do.

Those guys like things out of spite instead of liking things for their own enjoyment, what a miserable way to live I pity them.

I used to watch drinker until I picked up on his hypocrisy. He gets mad at "modern movies" for not having pure evil bad guys and "always giving them sob stories" but then complains when nazi characters are villains without sympathetic traits. He talks about how its a good thing that James Bond is unrealistic because it's a power fantasy but women being strong is bad because it's unrealistic. He has no concrete views or beliefs, he'll make any argument to defend right wing values even if those arguments go against other arguments he's made

I remember he tried to shit on Prey before it came out saying it was woke then tried to walk it back when it was good. After that he’s gone on the ignore list lol

For me the problem is not what he fundamentally stands for, but the obsessive way of criticizing _every single fucking movie_ from "woke or not" perspective. It gets stale so fast.

I always find it funny when these people say "modern movies are never good" and then when a good one comes out they say "this is the first good movie in years" and then completely ignore it's existence after 2 weeks so they can pretend the next one is the first good one in years Edit: check the replies if you need your daily "stupid argument from someone with awful film taste" fix

I find complaints about Star Trek suddenly going woke baffling. If there was ever a show that was open about pushing a progressive worldview, its star trek. It's like complaining about it suddenly going space.

"Japan loves conservative media" yeah, one of the most popular drama in Japan airing lately was 2nd season of comedy-romance about gay couple... and no, they don't make fun of them beeing gays

Jesus how do people put up with the way he draws out sounds at the end of sentences like that? It's so fucking annoying to listen to. Is he putting it on to try and sound more manly or does he actually sound like that?

I was actually thinking about Zoro's origins when drinker was talking about the strong males part. In fact a lot of the gags of One Piece is that Nami and the other women regularly kick Luffy's ass. Zoro's entire origin is that a girl kept beating him up and he wanted to get stronger than her. Nami's entire being is to outsmart and outwit 95% of the cast when she's on screen. Drinker's point to make light on how the girls are girls girls and the men are men's men is inherently wrong 🤷🏿‍♂️