The many (many) godawful reviews have only made Chris Pine love Poolman more

Chris Pine’s directorial debut, Poolman, has not been having a good time with critics. The film has, in fact, been panned about as hard as a movie can be, both during its debut last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and then again this month, when it began getting screened to a wider group of viewers. Although a few critics found something to like in Pine’s attempts to channel Chinatown and The Big Lebowski into a new L.A.-set neo-comedy-noir, our own Emma Keates was firmly in the majority when she noted that “Poolman sinks long before it gives itself the chance to swim.”

To which Pine himself says: Your hatred has only made him love his movie more. Pine revealed his take on the film’s reception during a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, noting that the time between TIFF and now has given him a chance to really run through a cycle of (mostly very bad) reactions to his movie. “I watched my film,” he told Horowitz. “After the reviews in Toronto I was like maybe I did make a pile of shit, I went back and watched it. I fucking love this film. I love this film so much.”

Here’s more of Pine’s reactions, which also included stating that he’s working on his feelings about negative reviews with a therapist (which we genuinely applaud!), and included at least one quote in Latin (“Vigor grows from the wound”):

When the film came out at Toronto and just got fucking panned…I tried to make a joyful film. With so much joy behind it, to then be met with a fusillade of not-so-joyous stuff…the cognitive dissonance there was quite something. It’s ultimately been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s forced me to double down on joy and really double down on what I love most about my job, which you kind of forget, it’s fundamentally about play. You become children for hours a day and make believe. There’s an impish quality that I don’t want to lose.

[via Variety]