Just when we thought we had seen the best headline of the week over at BBC — "Great Tits Cope Well With Warming" (get your mind out of the gutter! It's about birds) — and the best-possible What Happens in Vegas dismissal (courtesy of a caustic Manohla Dargis), along comes Time Magazine to combine the two distinctions in one revelatory piece of film criticism entitled "What Happens in Vegas Stays Sucky":

Whatever audience for high (or even medium) wit once existed has mostly decamped for Assisted Living. There remains a small slightly doddering crowd that's up for small, well-written comedies like Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me, which is currently playing in a release that will remain forever limited to older people who are not afraid to visit the "art" houses Mass market comedy (unless Judd Apatow and his heart-healthy pals are involved) is pitched largely to a young crowd that apparently likes to see pretty people — especially upwardly striving ones like Diaz's character — humiliated and abused in ways that are stupefyingly familiar.

I'm beginning to think that these kids represent a resentment demographic, less eager to laugh than they are to exercise spite and envy at peers who want to grow up sensibly rather than throw up mindlessly in some sleazebag movie.

While we certainly wouldn't put such harsh judgment past the author, 75-year-old Time critic Richard Schickel, the headline is an obviously, gloriously ironic point of departure into the very cultural lapse he laments. Like we care: We're just thrilled to see a mainstream reviewer meet his reader halfway in these troubled critical times; if only stick-in-the-mud David Ansen has preceded a few more pans with announcements like "My Balls Act Better Than Bruce Willis," maybe at least one of these tragic decampments could have been avoided.

• What Happens in Vegas Stays Sucky [Time]

Tags: great moments in criticism | richard schickel | time magazine | what happens in vegas