Such is the consensus opinion about P.T. Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” according to this Tribune story by Barbara Brotman, citing as her source postings to the Yahoo! movies message board.

Yet it merits an 8.1 out of 10 rating from users of the Internet Movie Database, which is about as precise an instrument. Over at Epinions.com, “PDL” has received an average of four out of five stars from 21 reviewers. That said, Brotman’s explanation of why critical and popular opinion often diverge is on the money:

Critics tend to be deeply appreciative of movies that are unusual, said Lester Friedman, a film professor at Northwestern University.

“Reviewers see an awful lot of bad films,” he said. “I think something which shows a spark of creativity or a willingness to invest genres with new insights and twists will certainly get their attention.”

Columbia film & video professor Reid Schultz also makes a good point in the story:

“The reviews were awful,” he said. “Basically, what they talked about was that this is a different Adam Sandler movie. ‘Look, Adam Sandler can act.’ But they don’t talk about what all those abstract colors are doing in this movie. … The analysis hasn’t been there.

“Of course people are walking out, because there’s nobody to help them understand it.”

But part of why the reviews did such a poor job of capturing the spirit of the movie and conveying it to their readers is because it does such an excellent job of defying genre conventions. My impressionistic reaction would probably have done most readers as well as most reviews from the nation’s best critics.

For a good example of a columnist who just doesn’t get it, read this entry by the Tribune’s Rick Morrissey. He writes:

“The problem wasn’t Sammy,” Baker said of the Cubs’ 67-95 record last season. “The problem was losing.”

Yes but, fair or not to Sammy, the two are entwined. When the Cubs are winning, Sosa’s loud clubhouse music doesn’t matter. When they’re losing, as they were last season, the music grates on teammates.

Aaargh! Morrissey also complains about Sosa’s defense, his running game, his strikeouts, and his failure to advance runners. Which is all very interesting, but totally off the mark. Sosa, while not the perfect player, is not a liability on this team. He is their best position player by far and one of the best in Cubs’ history. Sammy Sosa, as Baker so rightly put it, is not the problem. The roblems are too many to list here, but they have nothing to do with the guy who feel one home run short of hitting 50 or more five seasons in a row.

Moises Alou didn’t hit a lick for the first two and a half months of the season, Corey Patterson struck out 142 times, the bullpen blew so many saves I lost count. But who does Morrissey choose to write about? Sosa. Why? Because people love to bitch about Sosa. I’m not crazy about the guy, but he’s the best we got and the best we’re going to have for a long, long time to come.

It’s not like basketball where a player’s selfishness can cost the team points. Sosa’s job is to do well for himself by hitting the ball hard. That just oh so happens to help out the team too. When you can slug the ball like Sosa, there is no conflict between selfishness and “team play.” I just think these sportswriters hate salsa music. If he started blasting the Rolling Stones I bet they’d love the guy.

The good news is that Baker knows how to handle a self-involved superstar like Sosa. He did it for years with Barry Bonds in San Francisco. As I understand it, Baker’s atittude basically was, “Hey, this guy’s the best player the rest of you will probably ever play with it. So deal with it.” Sounds about right to me.

Not. Please, I hope not. I hope the Cubs are just being nice to meet with first baseman free-agent Jim Thome and his agent for lunch.

Aside from Mark Prior, first baseman Hee Sop Choi is about as sure a thing as the Cubs have had come out of their farm system in a long time. He hit great in triple-A last season and is tearing it up in the fall league right now. And it would be ashame to throw that away on a guy who, no matter what, will be much more expensive and one way or the other be gone much sooner.

Yes, Thome is probably the second best first baseman in baseball right now (after Jason Giambi), but the Cubs need to resist their temptation to go after the quick, big score. Wood, Prior, Clement; Hill, Patterson, Choi. Those are the guys the Cubs should be building around. This is the only time you’ll hear me say I wish there was a DH in the National League. Then you could have both Choi’s and Thome’s left-handed bats in the lineup. Ah, well.

Update: Hendry is really downplaying his meeting with Thome, which means that he probably told him in no uncertain terms that they weren’t going to budge Choi. So either Thome learns to play third base or it’s a no-go.

I’m not sure, but whatever it is, it inspired three Bartlett, Ill., teen-agers to steal 57 of them over the last six months and stashed them in a garage. It’s possibly the most bizarre prank I’ve heard of.

“We were just flabbergasted that anyone would take them,” said one victim of the teen gnome-goodniks. Which is why it’s the perfect crime, except that you have to put the damn things someplace. My question is whose garage it was and how did the owner overlook 57 gnomes? Did the parents just think, “Aw, Bobby’s collecting gnomes. That’s nice,” and not give it a second thought?

Those words, or something close to it, are uttered in every episode of the great little A&E show, “City Confidential.”

This show’s spin on the murder-in-an-hour format is to focus on the communities in which a well-known murder took place, showing how the deed and its aftermath affected the life of the place. The show is filled with wonderful little narrative touches. In describing the heat of a particular summer day in Chatanooga, Tenn., home of the MoonPie, the narrator says, “It was hotter than a melted MoonPie on a car’s dashboard.”

And the narrator! Black actor Paul Winfield, most well known for his role in the miniseries, “King,” has the most soothing, soporific voice. The corny cliches just roll right off his mellifluous tongue. Judging by the running times, this show was made to put people to sleep.

It’s definitely a lot more soothing than some noisy, annoying talk show. Murder as a lullaby. What an age we live in!

It seems that every Chicago sports columnist has a slightly different opinion about the hiring of Dusty Baker, but in the end it boils down to two. Phil Rogers calls it the “Cubs’ biggest victory in years,” while Jay Mariotti asks, “What have you done, Dusty?”

My view is that, generally, managers don’t make that much of a difference to how well a team does. As a friend of mine said about Baker’s $15 million signing, “What’s his batting average again?” A bad one can definitely cost you wins but a good one won’t win you too many, in spite of all the hype. But this hiring is a symbolic gesture to the franchise and to its fans that the Tribune Co. is committed to winning, or at least committed to looking like they’re committed to winning.

And the truth is that in spite of how awful the Cubs were last year, they have the potential to be a perennial contender for the remainder of this decade. They have a trio of strong, young starting pitchers (not just “arms”) in Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and Matt Clement. They have a trio of potentially very good young position players in first baseman Hee Sop Choi, second baseman Bobby Hill and centerfielder Corey Patterson. And, of course, they still have a guy who not only wants to get to the Hall of Fame, but wouldn’t mind winning a pennant or two on his way there in Sammy Sosa.

In this kind of situation you want to bring in a strong personality who can pull things together a little bit, improve the clubhouse atmosphere, nurture young players, coddle veterans, and most importantly not screw it up. The Cubs may not contend for a division crown in two years, but it won’t be because Baker screwed up. As bad as Baylor was as a manager, it wasn’t his fault that Moises Alou and Todd Hundley forgot how to hit or that the bullpen forgot how to pitch.

Baker won’t be a magic bullet. The Cubs have a lot of holes to fill, and I don’t expect this coming year to be anything more than a transition year, though supposedly one of Baker’s assets is his ability to attract guys to come play for him. So he’s not just a manager, but a personnel asset as well. Regardless, the young guys should be given a chance to play, and the Cubs should not trade away the farm if they’re six or eight games out of first in July. It’s not worth it. I’m tired of one-year deals.

The Cubs deserve, and have a chance to be, a team that year in and year out contends for division crowns and wild-card spots.

Can legendary stat maven and baseball historian Bill James finally end the curse of the Bambino? We shall see. It’s good they’re giving him a shot, anyway.

It doesn’t take much to read in between these lines.

“It went well,” Baker told the Chicago Tribune on Monday night. “It went very well. I know they’ve had their problems, but they’re committed to winning. I really believe that and I think they believe I can help them win.”

“I think since Dusty became available, he was going to be our choice,” Hendry said Monday night from Phoenix, Ariz., where the meeting took place.

“We had a nice chat with Dusty all afternoon,” Hendry said. “He’s a tremendous guy and it was a good day. Now we’ll just try to proceed.”

Now it’s just a matter of dollars and sense. Baker wants four years, which shows he doesn’t expect to succeed immediately. He has realistic expectations about what he can expect with a Cubs team next year.

As ESPN.com’s Ray Ratto points out, Barry took all the fun out of the NL MVP voting this year by being just too good.

As for the AL MVP race, there’s no question who the best player in the American League is — Alex Rodriguez by a long shot. The irony is that by signing for such a huge sum, A-Rod has taken away the Rangers’ ability to compete for free-agent talent except for guys nobody else wants to deal with, like John Rocker and Carl Everett.

So because his team stinks, A-Rod is denied the personal recognition he so richly deserves. Funny how things work out, huh?

My dad and I and a friend from work saw Bob Dylan at the Allstate Arena last Friday. Both of the dailies’ rock critics raved, but I must admit that I was a little bit disappointed.

Dylan has been playing a lot of keyboards on this tour, and as Kot points out his playing was out of left field on a lot of songs. Some songs Bob just nailed. “Tombstone Blues,” “Things Have Changed,” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleedin’),” “Cold Irons Bound,” and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” were standouts. And the best song of the night was the boogie-woogie dance ’til its hurt jump of “Summer Days,” on which Bob and his fine band just played their hearts out.

But too many other songs just kind of hung there, and Bob was in poor vocal form much of the evening. I don’t mean his voice, which is an acquired taste. I mean his enunciation, his phrasing, his overall care with the delivery of the words and their accompanying feelings.

Particularly off the mark, I thought, were “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Just Like a Woman” and in particular, “High Water (For Charley Patton).” The last is probably the best song on Bob’s most recent album, “Love and Theft,” (aside from “Mississippi”) and his performance of it last year at the United Center was fabulous.

He tried to mix it up, as is Bob’s tendency, and it just fell completely flat. Bob’s never boring, but he can be frustrating when he goes and does a thing like that. A week later in the tour and “High Water” probably sounds great. Ah, well.

Who can speculate, but I thought Bob really put a lot of conviction into his rendering of “Masters of War,” which is a great anti-war song because it doesn’t belabor obvious tragedy of war but discusses how the machine for needless war can be fed. It’s like a poetic, musical study in public-choice theory.

I cannot honestly say that I didn’t enjoy myself, because I did. But I look forward to seeing a better show next time around, which is hopefully soon.