Plan in Film Critic Row Gets a D(umb) Rating

Blythe’s lone movie house has offered to let the local newspaper’s film critic back inside to review movies--but only if the Palo Verde Valley Times agrees to print reviews by a second critic working for the theater.

The California desert community’s only newspaper rejected the proposal Friday, calling it a “dumb idea.”

Palo Verde Valley Times movie critic Cathy Monnett was banned from the Blythe Community Cinema last month because the theater’s owners said her reviews were too negative, bad for business and did not cover R-rated films.

On Thursday, Don Davis, an attorney and brother of theater co-owner Paul Davis, conveyed the following offer to Monnett’s twice-weekly newspaper:

“The theater will appoint its own movie critic, who will review all films, including R-rated films. . . . The theater will then admit the . . . Times’ designated film critic . . . providing the Times concurrently runs both reviews in its paper, giving equal space and prominence to each.”

‘Kind of Stupid’

“I told him to forget it,” said Glen Sparlin, publisher of the Palo Verde Valley Times, which has an average circulation of 4,500. “I thought it would be kind of stupid giving two critics side-by-side columns, when you know damn well that the other critic was only going to write rave reviews.”

Monnett has begun driving to a movie theater in Yuma, 90 miles away, to review the same films playing in the Colorado River-area community of Blythe. Monnett, who contends her right to freedom of expression has been violated, was unavailable Friday for comment.

In addition, Sparlin said his newspaper plans to take the theater owners to small claims court to recover the $50 it spends each time Monnett makes a round-trip visit to Yuma.

“We’ll go to small claims court once, and if the judge says pay the $50, I don’t know what we will do,” Don Davis said. He warned that more extensive litigation against the struggling, 600-seat theater would force it to “cave in and close.”

Sparlin said Monnett has traveled to Yuma twice in the last three weeks, most recently to review the movie “Scrooged.”