That is terribly unfair

Via JVL, I see this article from the National Post:

Happy as a clam, rich as a minor Rockefeller, Will Smith turned up recently on a 60 Minutes update of an item from last December. He was there to promote his current movie, Hancock, but his main theme was his huge success and the way he’s engineered it. He left me thinking sad and rueful thoughts about, of all people, the late Pauline Kael, the most passionate, stimulating and argument-starting critic in the history of film.

Will Smith has proven himself a talented movie star, no doubt worth the $20-million or so that he receives for a film. His movies have, after all, grossed about $4.5-billion. He’s apparently an amiable chap, on-and off-screen. At the same time, he’s emerged as the living embodiment of the crass mechanical Hollywood that Kael, by accident, helped to usher in.

It goes on like that. What the article fails to acknowledge is Smith’s talent as an actor; how is his persona any less acceptable than that of Bogart or Grant–similarly rote character actors who found super stardom while pulling the same act over and over again. Smith is a regular, pleasant guy who can pull off pretty much any role within the range of “kind of likable protagonist.” He’s not Daniel Day Lewis, or Gary Oldman.

Is trash cinema a problem? I mean, I guess. Great films are made every year: most of them simply don’t make a ton of money or star a huge star. Why crap on Will Smith because he’s successful?