You know the feeling. You’re halfway through a review of a new film, a gallery opening, or a restaurant you almost want to try, and your eye starts twitching. Everything is “stunning.” Performances are “powerful.” The chef’s vision is “bold.” The decor is “thoughtful.” And yet you’ve absorbed exactly nothing. No image lingers. No argument takes shape. The prose has the nutritional content of packing foam. What you’ve just read is a press release that someone dressed up with adjectives—a genre that now passes for criticism in far too many places.
I’m Iris Delacroix, and I’ve spent more than a decade learning to tell the difference between an actual review and a lazy rewrite of a publicist’s one-sheet. The boundary isn’t always obvious at first glance. Publicists have gotten crafty; editors are stretched thin; and a certain type of writer has figured out you can string together the same two dozen approving modifiers and call it a day. What follows is a field guide to spotting the fake—a taxonomy of the tells that separate a genuine critical encounter from a glorified transcription.
The Opening That Tells You Nothing
Start with the lead. A real critic knows that the first sentence is a handshake—a promise of a specific angle. The press-release-in-disguise usually opens with a vague declaration of cultural significance. You run into phrases like “This season, [venue] invites us to reconsider the boundaries of [medium]” or “In a world where [trend], [artist] dares to [verb].” Nobody talks like this. Nobody thinks like this. It’s the voice of a brochure that learned to type.
The giveaway is the absence of a human observer. A real review starts with a particular moment: the smell of the gallery, the sound the film made when the reel kicked in, the way the soup arrived a little too cold. The adjective-laden press release starts with a thesis handed down from the marketing team. If you can swap out the artist’s name or the title of the work and the sentence still functions, you’re not reading criticism. You’re reading a template.
The Quotation Marks That Wave a White Flag
Next, watch how the piece handles quotation. An actual critic quotes sparingly, usually to analyze language or catch a subject in a revealing moment. The pseudo-review leans on block quotes from the artist’s statement or the director’s interview as if they’re load-bearing walls. The writer has outsourced the thinking. A typical passage reads something like: “As the artist explains, ‘My work interrogates the liminal space between memory and materiality.’” And then the critic just nods along, adding “indeed” or “truly” before moving on.
This isn’t analysis. It’s stenography. A critic’s job is to test the artist’s claims against the work itself—to ask whether the piece actually “interrogates” anything or just gestures toward a grad-school catchphrase. When a review becomes a polite transcription of the press kit, the writer has surrendered. You can almost hear the white flag flapping.
The Adjective Audit
Let’s talk about the adjectives themselves. Not all praise is suspect, but certain words have become the telltale heartbeats of a non-review. “Stunning” means nothing anymore; it’s the verbal equivalent of a nod. “Breathtaking” is a close cousin—a word best reserved for actual respiratory events. “Masterful” gets slapped onto any competent piece of craftsmanship, diluting the idea of mastery into a participation trophy. “Luminous” is especially beloved by people who never bothered to describe what the light was actually doing.
Do an adjective audit. Go through a suspect review and highlight every evaluative adjective. Then ask: does the writer give me the evidence that produced this judgment? If the answer is no—if “poignant” shows up without a single description of what made the moment land—then the adjective is just a decal. A sticker applied to the surface of the press release to make it look like a review. A genuine critic earns the adjective; the counterfeit inherits it from the marketing copy.
The Structure That Mirrors the Press Kit
Structure is another giveaway. A press release follows a predictable logic: opening announcement, biographical blurb, description of the work, list of collaborators, practical details. A review that mimics this architecture is advertising that it never left the starting blocks. You see a dutiful paragraph about the artist’s CV (“A graduate of Yale’s MFA program, they have exhibited at…”), followed by a summary of the project’s stated intentions, followed by a concluding paragraph that could double as a pull quote for the poster.
Real criticism is messier. It interrupts itself. It argues with its own first impressions. It might spend three paragraphs on a single brushstroke or a ten-second scene because that’s where the meaning pooled. The press-release-with-adjectives distributes its attention evenly, like a host making sure every guest gets exactly five minutes of small talk. Nobody is slighted, and nobody is truly seen.
The Absence of a Negative Observation
Maybe the most reliable diagnostic is the complete absence of friction. An honest review contains some form of resistance—a moment where the critic says, in effect, “This didn’t work for me, and here’s why.” It doesn’t have to be savage. It can be a gentle, precise observation that a certain passage drags, that a color choice undercuts the intended mood, that the third act loses its nerve. But it has to be somewhere. A review that finds nothing at all to question isn’t a review; it’s a blurb factory.
The pseudo-critic will sometimes try a fake concession—a tiny criticism so hedged and padded that it functions as further praise. “If there is a minor quibble, it’s that the exhibition leaves one wanting more.” That’s not a quibble; it’s a compliment in disguise. A real quibble has teeth. It names a specific failure and explains its effect. Without that, the piece is just a bouquet.
The Language of the Non-Encounter
Pay attention to whether the writer ever places themselves in the room. A review that relies on phrases like “the work explores” or “the film examines” without grounding those claims in a specific, sensory encounter is likely working from a description, not an experience. The critic who actually attended the show can tell you where they stood, what they heard from the next gallery over, how the light shifted as the afternoon wore on. The critic who skimmed the press release can only tell you what the press release already said.
This is the language of the non-encounter, and it’s rampant in the age of the quick turnaround. When a writer is filing three reviews a week, the temptation to let the press materials do the heavy lifting gets overwhelming. The result is a piece with all the texture of a Wikipedia plot summary, decorated with the requisite dose of enthusiasm.
When the Byline Is the Only Original Thing
There’s a particular subspecies of this problem that deserves its own vitrine: the review that reads identically to every other review of the same show. When multiple outlets run pieces that share the same descriptive phrases, the same quoted material, and the same mild, approving posture, you’re seeing an ecosystem of press-release dependency. The only original element is the byline—and sometimes even that feels auto-generated.
This isn’t a failure of individual writers so much as a systemic collapse. When publications treat criticism as content to fill the gaps between advertisements, when editors prioritize speed over perspective, the press-release-with-adjectives becomes the rational output. It’s the cheapest, fastest way to produce something that looks like a review to anyone not paying close attention. And the publicists know it. They’ve learned to write their releases in the voice they want critics to adopt, making the transformation nearly frictionless.
How to Read Defensively
So what’s a reader to do? First, develop a reflexive skepticism toward the one-sentence declaration of genius. If a review tells you something is “a triumph” but can’t tell you what was triumphed over, be suspicious. Second, look for the specific detail that could only come from an observer on the scene: the cough during the quiet passage, the crack in the gallery’s floorboards, the way the waiter’s expression changed when a certain dish arrived. These are the fingerprints of an actual encounter.
Third, check whether the review contains an idea. Not a summary, not a judgment, but an idea—a proposition about what the work means or how it operates that you could argue with. A press release can’t give you an idea because its purpose is to eliminate argument. A critic’s purpose is to start one.
FAQ
How can I tell if a review is based on the press release rather than the actual work?
Look for the absence of sensory detail and the presence of language that mirrors the promotional materials. If the review describes the work’s themes in abstract terms but never anchors them in a specific moment—a particular scene, a visual detail, a sound—it’s likely working from a written summary rather than direct experience. Also watch for quotations from the artist or press kit that are presented without analysis; this often signals that the writer is paraphrasing rather than observing.
Why do so many reviews read like press releases with adjectives?
The economics of publishing play a large role. When critics are under pressure to produce high volumes of content quickly, the press release becomes a convenient shortcut. Additionally, some outlets see criticism primarily as a service to advertisers or a way to maintain access to venues and publicists, which incentivizes positive, frictionless copy. The result is a genre that mimics criticism but lacks the independent perspective that defines it.
Are there specific adjectives that indicate a review is just a dressed-up press release?
Certain adjectives have become so overused in uncritical writing that they function as warning flares. Words like “stunning,” “breathtaking,” “masterful,” and “luminous” often appear without supporting evidence. When a review strings together a series of such terms without explaining what produced the judgment, you are likely reading a text that inherited its vocabulary from the press materials rather than from a genuine critical encounter.
Can a positive review still be a real review?
Absolutely. Positivity and criticism are not opposites. A real review can be enthusiastic—even rhapsodic—as long as it grounds its praise in specific observations and remains willing to note imperfections. The difference is that a genuine positive review shows its work: it describes what made the experience effective, it acknowledges the choices involved, and it does not read like it was written to be excerpted on a poster. Earned enthusiasm is very different from enthusiasm that’s applied like a coat of paint.
The next time you finish a review and feel like you’ve eaten a meal of cotton candy—faintly sweet, entirely insubstantial—you’ll know what you’ve been served. Spit it out. Demand something with texture. The culture deserves critics who actually show up, look hard, and tell the truth, even when the truth is that the emperor’s new press release could use fewer adjectives.