Fucking Joel Siegel. Dude walked out of a press screening for Clerks II. According to the always-reliable Page Six of the New York Post tabloid:

“Time to go!” roared Siegel to his fellow critics. “First movie I’ve walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!” His tirade came 40 minutes into the long-awaited Weinstein Company sequel to Smith’s 1994 cult classic about two foul-mouthed Long Island convenience store clerks who razz customers and goof off.

In the scene that sent Siegel to the exit, the characters graphically discuss hiring a woman to perform sexual favors on a donkey. Siegel told Page Six: “It was so foul and mean and repulsive. I finally realized I could not say anything positive… I wasn’t ready for this kind of smut… I hope he doesn’t make any more movies.”

Are you fucking kidding me, Siegel? You walk out of a movie because you “could not say anything positiveâ€�? Read your job description: You’re paid to watch movies whether you like them or not, not to sit there and make puns, then put on a big show when you decide to walk out. (On a side note, what business does a film critic have walking out of any movie? And on another side note, why are all the famous film critics—Joel Siegel, Leonard Maltin, Michael Medved—such douchebags?)

But the better part of this story is Smith’s response.

(Smith's pretty proud of getting Siegel to walk out, as one might guess from the last paragraph of the Clerks II feature I wrote this week.) From Smith's blog:

You'd imagine this would bother me, and yet, I'm as delighted by this news as I was with the eight minute standing ovation "Clerks II� received in Cannes.

I mean, it's Joel Siegel, for Christ's sake. As Paul Thomas Anderson once said of the man, getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor. This is the guy who stole his mustachioed critic shtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back. This is a guy who seemingly prides himself on being "punny� - that is, he likes to add his own nyuk-nyuk wordplay into the reviews he writes/gives.

For "Pirates 2", he made us all titter with "Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Fun�. For Pixar's lastest, he made us squeal with delight when he wrote "Wheelie Good Time for `Cars'�. Can you believe he somehow not only made us laugh, but also think, when he challenged our perception with "X-Men' Fails to X-cite�?

But Smith's (more valid) point is just what a lame maneuver it is to walk out and make a huff like Siegel did:

You never... NEVER disrupt a movie, simply because you don't like it.

Cardinal rule of movie-going: shut your fucking mouth while the movie's playing. They even ask you to do so in the pre-show run-up to every flick (�Cell phones and pagers off, no talking during the show�). This guy went beyond talking, even; he was making a spectacle of himself as he left. I've now spoken to three folks in attendance last night, and all have said that Siegel WANTED everyone to know how disgusted he was, and that he was leaving. If you want to share your displeasure with everyone, that's fine, dude; just do it AFTER the movie, not during. Some folks were enjoying themselves. I don't come down to your job and slap the taste out of your mouth for coming up with a line like "`Shark Tale' Is a Halibut Good Time�; so don't fuck with my stuff WHILE IT'S STILL SCREENING.

I'd recommend reading Smith's whole blog post, 'cause it's pretty funny, and it points out something pretty important—once you get past all the dick and fart jokes, Clerks II is actually a really sweet, good-hearted, even feel-good film. I mean, it has a goddamn Bollywood-inspired musical number set to a Jackson Five song! What the fuck is wrong with film criticism these days?