Read the fine print

At the time that the review that precedes this posting was written to be shared on Amazon, there were a handful of critics -- probably true blue impulse buyers -- whose 3, 2, and 1-star ratings were dragging down the overall product rating on a DVD release that I thought deserved much better.

The main gripe of the negative-leaning critics -- who apparently also had to be among to the very first in line to buy the DVD collection when it came out in April -- was that the films featured were all in the original Japanese language with English subtitles. And most Americans, as we all know, really have this thing when it comes to watching foreign language films with subtitles. "I don't want to read a movie", is the now-seemingly mandatory mantra of this crowd.

But their dislike of reading subtitles must also extend to simple product descriptions as well. Had any of those savvy spenders spent a measly 30 seconds reading the information provided by Amazon on the product page, they could have made an informed decision, instead of buying first and then negatively critiquing later a product that didn't live up to their own ill-informed expectations.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite cautionary punchlines was the one that warns us to read the fine print. But as an adult, all too often I find myself wishing that people would read the not-so-fine print too.