Citizen Kane is often regarded as the best film of all time, a masterpiece of movie-making that is virtually without flaw. That didn't stop popular YouTube series Cinema Sins from roasting the movie all the same in its latest video.
"Oh yes we did," reads the video's description. "It's been almost 4 years. Time to put our money where our motto is. So here are the sins of the much beloved and respected (with good reason) Citizen Kane."
The "Cinema Sin" counter starts at negative five and goes from there. In typical Cinema Sins fashion, most of these sins aren't plot inconsistencies or production goof-ups, but rather just jokes or observations made about the movie that, for some reason, add to its total number of "sins." That doesn't mean there aren't some legitimate nitpicks to be made. Like most movies, characters occasionally do and say certain things that serve only to move forward and are a little far-fetched. If they didn't, there wouldn't be a movie. The video takes several pot-shots at the film's iconic phrase of "Rosebud" and how it comes up over the course of the movie as well, saying they're surprised macguffins, a term for an object or a device in a movie that merely serves as a trigger for the plot, aren't actually called rosebuds.
The total video is 16 minutes long. At the end, Citizen Kane racks up 93 sins, and that's with a number of sins being removed for excellent cinematography and excellent scenes in general. That's a lot for the most critically-acclaimed movie in cinema history.
Sure, it's not anywhere close to the number of sins a movie like Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ended up with (174, in case you were wondering), but it's still way more than you would expect for a movie supposedly without equal.
However, that's how Cinema Sins goes. Take away the jokes and the nitpicks, and you would find Citizen Kane, along with most of the other movies Cinema Sins goes after, to have far fewer "sins" than the number at the end of the video would have you believe.
Still, even if the idea of cataloging the sins of Citizen Kane is a bit silly, it does go to show that no movie is completely free of criticism — even if it's not good criticism.
