It turns out Kevin Smith only hates critics when they say mean things about his movies

Kevin Smith has announced that he’s ending his feud with the mean people—i.e., critics—who say mean things about his movies, now that some of those mean people have said nice things about one of them instead. Smith originally made his proclamation that he wouldn’t be listening to mean people anymore after they said mean things about Cop Out, his 2010 buddy cop homage that was brutally panned by the majority of meanies. He kept it up for 2011’s Red State, pointing out in a Q&A at Comic-Con that most mean people are just failed moviemakers, who only say mean things about his movies because they wish they got to make them, too.

But now that the mean people have started saying nice things about Smith’s latest film, the Human-Centipede-but-with-walruses horror comedy Tusk, it turns out that some of those mean people are actually pretty nice! Smith even went so far as to retweet a glowing review by Scott Foundas, Chief Film Mean Person for Variety, telling BuzzFeed’s Alison Willmore that reading Foundas’ review was, “a breakthrough,” adding:

It was such a crazy emotional moment where I got a little wet-eyed, just by virtue of the fact that for so long, I was so fucking angry. It was nice to let go of that. I’m too fucking old to fight or care anymore. I’m old now enough to know some people are going to like it and some people are not going to like it. And that’s way easier to say with something like Tusk, because yeah, some people are not going to like it. I’m more shocked that anybody likes it. I’m delighted.

Of course, The A.V. Club’s own mean person A.A. Dowd was less than impressed with Tusk, so it remains to be seen whether the feud can ever truly be over—or whether, like Justin Long sewed into a walrus costume, it will continue to waddle and thrash about until the end of time.