The stereotype of a movie critic is a snob, a hater, a hard-to-please aesthete. That couldn’t be more false. It turns out that the majority of critics are favorable far more often than not. A new study ranks major movie critics according to how relatively negative or positive they are. Using data from Metacritic (which assigns numerical 1-100 values to nearly every published review), it compares reviews of the 200 highest-grossing movies of the last decade. Of the 50 critics analyzed, only 15 rate movies below the average score.

Kyle Smith of the New York Post is the nation’s third-most-hating critic, according to the study. “It didn’t surprise me that much,” he says of his ranking. “At the Post, we have a four-star rating scale. I figure two stars is an average movie, so I tend to cluster them around the two-star mark.”

Smith shouldn’t be taken for a snob, though. Last year, the Oscar-nominated American Hustle had an average score of 90 on Metacritic. Smith? A cool 50. “My hackles are raised when I see a movie that is made by a bunch of rich kids like David O. Russell who are just punching down,” he says, with jokes at the expense of working-class strivers with bad hair. “To me, satire is punching up — you take down the high and mighty.” And that’s not all. In his review, he wrote:

So David O. Russell invited over some interesting actors (and also Bradley Cooper) to be filmed at a 1970s theme party. Too bad that footage didn’t make a movie. ... I’d forgive Russell (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook), who co-wrote and directed, if he did anything particularly well but the con-job material is diffuse, the mob danger consists of Robert De Niro clocking in as a menacing gangster for one scene, and the humor consists mostly of "Wow, look at that hair!" moments. When the people who kit out your actors are funnier than your script, maybe satire isn’t your calling.

What bugs Smith most? “I think critics are too generous to blockbusters because they get caught up in the hype,” he says. “I’m 47. The thrill of seeing special effects has worn off.”