A Gal Named “Jerome” Is Cinema’s Premier Reviewer

 

Jerome Weiselberry's YouTube page.

By Thomas Leturgey

Ten years ago, a brunette started calling herself “Jerome Weiselberry” and started reviewing books and movies for friends’ amusement on YouTube. Since that time, “Jerome” has become a sensation for more than 16,7000 subscribers.

But first, “Jerome.” It’s a random selection, she explains. We know very little about the young lady’s personal life, except she remains quite close to her parents and siblings. Her mother is a frequent film partner, while her father will accompany her to see a Godzilla movie in the theater. And in an era where random, niche “celebrities” force one to Google their name when scandal hits, Jerome’s anonymity is the freshest of air.

Her's is a movie and book “film club” between small town friends.

She’s created some 600 videos over that time and accumulated a staggering amount of “cumulative views” of weekly videos that started out with girl-centric book reviews, (see Jane Eyre). However, her diverse interests swung Jerome to Joseph Cotton movies and later “Creature Features” that are some of her most viewed videos. She reviewed the first Godzilla movie in 2017 and continues to have some of the most thoughtful reviews on the subject anywhere.

“Jerome” has an online presence that is wholesome and extraordinarily intelligent. The show was showcased in a 43 minute “anniversary special” in which some of her earliest years included more skits and silliness (when’s the last time you saw a zany riff on Melville’s Moby Dick), but she always exhibits a cheerful, demeanor.

More recently, reviews are good-humored and detailed with thesaurus-quality words, and that’s first-class.

In an email she noted that for a while, 1949’s “The Third Man” (starring Cotton and Orson Welles) was her favorite all-time flick after listing a few classic Disney flicks from her pre-YouTube younger days. But that might have changed, she continued.

When you watch a “Jerome Weiselberry” review (or batch of critiques from a month’s worth of viewing), you’ll be introduced to a world of vintage Hollywood offerings from eons ago. “The Blob,” “It Conquered The World,” and “Citizen Cane” which she returned to review a second time. She covers Hitchcock, Star Trek films, World War II epics, westerns, and Universal monster movies.

And those are well-known flicks. She will discuss film noir and westerns, B-movies and classic literature. “My top 5 favorite Ronald Colman movies” was discussed in one 2016 video. The English-born Colman died at age 67 in 1958 (after a career that spanned from the 1920’s to the 1950s) and was the inaugural recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the 21^st Century, Weiselberry digs deep. She has three Colman-focused videos with a combined 33,000 views.

She notes that some of the movies are found on YouTube, free trial streaming services, or on DVDs from local library stops. The backstories on how these reviews from the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s came to be is just as good as the classic itself. So, she isn’t flaunting tickets to red carpet premieres in the biggest cities. In recent vintage, most of her videos are shot in front of a bookcase full of paperbacks and owl figurines.

One Halloween-conceptual video discusses “An Analysis of Sound” from Horror films in the 1940’s. Another was a dissertation of an actor’s intensity when he rolls his sleeves up. Long-time fans have gotten to know Weiselberry and know how to playfully tease some of those observations.

Her longest video is a nearly two-hour odyssey about reading 39 books “with Snowbound in the title.” It was tough, she lamented but would not capitulate. A follow-up with 17 missed books only took 40 minutes. Another themed video detailed Jerome’s favorite movies from 1920-1965.

The all-time gold star for movie reviews on television is the team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. While those Chicago newspaper men-turned stars of syndication sometimes turned their noses up at kaiju film, Weiselberry is the smart, musical and singing “kid sister” all of us cinematic nerds deserve.

After exhaustive research on every flick, she ticks off names of cinematographers and composers, as well as actors with the smallest of roles. Many of the movies she’s seen are on Svengoolie’s radar, but she admits to not really watching that program.

Jerome is modest, and “gets” films like M. Knight Shamalan’s “Signs.” It can be argued that “Signs” is Weiselberry’s finest review. She doesn’t tip toe through, nor bulldoze the spiritual and religious connotations from “Signs.”

Here’s to the next 10 years of Jerome Weiselberry’s success.

To close and to paraphrase Jerome’s signature catchphrase: “Thanks, for reading, Bye!”