On the topic of self-contradicting reviews, I once got one where the reviewer began by noting that "the paper is very difficult to read and almost impossible to understand" and proceeded to remark that "it contains very interesting ideas"...
At the very least, (s)he would have had to understand the main ideas to deem them interesting (though perhaps the details were difficult to follow). So yes, you're right that it isn't technically a contradiction. The way it was written did come across to me as intelectually dishonest at the time, though.