Ok, a few things need to be pointed out here, based on the past few posts....
First off, while I've admitted I'm not a big fan of the Fantasy genre, that doesn't mean there aren't movies in that genre that I have still liked... such as the LOTR movies (it just took a while). Also, this being related to the fantay genre has not prejudiced me against the movie. I gave it a fair shot, and it came up wanting in my opinion.
The problem here is that it seems you want to discount a person's emotional reaction to a film based simply off of the watching experience as invalid without a "proper" argument to back up why. Nobody who dislikes LITW has to explain or justify their beliefs if they simply watched it, tried to like it, and came away feeling like they wasted their time. Now some of the "haters" simply disliked it, and other M.Night movies because they were his movies. That's not an acceptable reason. But if somebody gave it a fair shot, as I did, and came away unimpressed, I don't really need to enumerate a bunch of reasons why I didn't like it. The result of watching the film was dislike, and that's sufficient.
However, I've tried to explore my feelings further, and provide some reasons for why it probably did not "work" for me, and that's where things like character development and bizzare plot points come in. I don't feel the need to "back up" my dislike for dislike for the movie with a bunch of reasons though, because the bottom line is at the movie of the movie it left an unfavorable impression. That's not my fault, that's the films. It's not a sin to dislike a movie, even a Shyamalan movie (with the exception of Signs!

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As for the whole populous approach to movie appraisal, I'm not saying that it's the only criterion to determine whether a movie is good or not. However, I am saying that if you show a movie to 10 people, and 7 of them hate a movie, 1 thinks it's ok, 1 likes it, and 1 loves it, that the filmmaker probably didn't do a very good job, since the point (in my opinion) of making movies is to provide enjoyment for the viewers. If I was the person showing the above film, I would have to humble myself, and realize that even though there were some people who did not hate the film, the great majority did, and that indicates a failure on my part. Now there are certainly movies that are good that may not be popular, and movies that are popular that may not be good. In my opinion, what is even "good" is really subjective to each viewer's personal taste. So I'm not going to say LITW is a "bad movie" for everybody, because obviously some of you like it. However, given the fact that the vast majority of people agree with my opinion on the movie, the onus to prove this opinion isn't on me, or anybody agreeing with me, but on everyone else who actually liked the movie. Clearly, the movie had some deficiencies, otherwise so many people, including many Shyamalan fans (of which I know many), would not dislike the film. I can accept that you like, or even love the film. But you need to accept that myself, and those like me who disliked the film, are not wrong in our opinions, and are not "missing" anything. And, that we don't need to justify that opinion to others who disagree in order for it to be an accurate and valid opinion.
Regarding the critic character, I was simply stating that the character was representative of people that Shyamalan had already taken a dislike to, as they had him. I'm a writer, and I know that we write from our own personal experience. If Shyamalan had rosy relations with the critics, don't think he would have created the only negative character in his movie, and the only character who died, as a movie critic. I highly doubt in the bedtime story he told to the kids before it evolved into this movie, that there was even a movie critic character. That character was added to make a statement, and honestly, I agree with the statement. Killing off the movie critic was arguably the best part of the movie!
As for what classifies as "legitimate storytelling", I guess that's up for debate. Far be it from me to pontificate that my opinion on the matter is the only valid one. Pointing out that my opinion is in the majority though does lend credence to it's veracity, as it's far more likely that the majority is right about the movie, then that they are wrong. That's just simple logistics. But again, I am a firm believer in movies being subjective in nature, and thereby open to differing opinions, which aren't really "wrong" in and of themselves.