In other words, these reviews are reviews for the masses. Critics are going to give ratings based on what they think the average person is going to like (provided they're not the snooty type who only give good ratings to movies no one understands). .
Well, the fantasy crowd has generally never been part of the masses. They're almost a subculture. The average person, when presented with a piece of fantasy media, tends to say to him or herself "Not my kind of thing" and hardly give it another thought. Why is this? I think it's largely because of a social stigma that says there's something wrong with escapism. One should never get too imaginative, and fantasy movies are "kiddie" movies. This stigma keeps the populous out of the fantasy genre leaving it for the fringes who never cared that much for social convention anyway. This leads to a further subconscious characterization of fantasy as "for the geeky types" and therefore the masses continue to ignore it. Well, the masses are what most critics are considering, so the masses are the people that get catered to. Most critics don't even understand fantasy films or its audience, and probably never will. It's really a shame when you think about it, because there have been some great fantasy movies that people would really enjoy. .
Which brings up a point: there have been some well-reviewed fantasy movies lately, such as The Sixth Sense (which didn't start doing well until it's 2nd week, showing the power of word-of-mouth advertising), and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Why were these movies given good ratings? Well, the latter is obvious. It's foreign (which critics love). If it had been the same story made with westerners I doubt it would have done so well (It also would be a completely different movie, so maybe that's not a fair analogy). With The Sixth Sense, people could fool themselves into think what they were watching wasn't really fantasy.
