The Rotten Tomatoes curse
Hi all, Couple/Think has been on vacation for the last week so thanks for coming around this way again. During our mini-vacay, Kirsten and I saw the movie “Iron Man.” It was thoroughly entertaining and fun–everything the studios are trying to achieve for their summer blockbusters. Before this flick though, our last trip to the movies was months ago for “There Will Be Blood.”
Typically, we’d go to the show at least twice a month. However, seeing as we’re just starting to emerge from the film dead zone known as “after the Academy Awards and before summer,” it’s been slim pickings. Still, even our DVD viewing has decreased since the first of the year and I wondered what could be the root of our movie apathy. I think we’ve been cursed by Rotten Tomatoes. Not a evil fairy godmother curse, but the curse of being ruined by everyone else’s opinion.
Rotten Tomatoes collects and organizes movie reviews and tabulates them into one overall score, known as the “Tomatometer.” Based on a percentage from 1-100, the better the movie, the higher the score. Kirst and I sometimes make a game out of guessing what a movie is going to score. For example, after seeing the preview for “What Happens in Vegas,” you could smell the stench a million miles away – and we were on the money with our guess of in the 20’s – the stinker scored a 28%. Gotta love that each movie has a “consensus” of the reviews – What Happens was “Mostly settles for derivative romantic comedy conventions.” Enough said, right? This information is very helpful because it guides us away from the money and time wasters. Yet, now it’s playing reverse psychology on me.
Instead of possibly taking a chance on a show that has a decent trailer, it’s always, “what does RT rate it?” before I’m even checking upcoming show times. And, what about the movies right along the pass/fail curve of 60ish%? Maybe I expect too much, but when I see movie in that score range, it will almost always get relegated to the “watch on DVD when nothing else is out catalogue.” I still love movies, let me rephrase, I love GOOD movies. RT has not diminished my enthusiasm, just increased my cynicism and skepticism.
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Comments
I’m always torn when it comes to reading reviews. I do like Rotten Tomatoes because I can and will read what all the varying critics have to say. Some critics I think are morons, some I align better with. Taking only the ones I like in, I usually get a very clear idea of the movie and whether I’ll like it or not. I wish I could “turn off” certain no-name or loser critics from the RT reviews. Now, THAT would be a powerful critic site.
I, too, Yelp often, so though I don’t usually agree with reviews, I do appreciate them in context.
I agree with both of you - it’s a love/hate with Rotten Tomatoes. What an interesting idea about weeding out no-name critics! You would think with the advances in customizable content with these types of sites that it could be easily done. Regardless, Rotten Tomatoes is more often right than not and I’ve cursed myself many times for not listening to the “rotten” rating for a movie that I just had to see.
Cade - I’ll have to check out your Yelp page. That is one site that I haven’t gotten too involved with yet, but turn to constantly for Chicago info.
I hate review websites for movies. Which is interesting because I write reviews for places (yelp.com) and love it. For some reason though, I have never agreed with pretty much anyone about the fantastic-ness of a movie. So I just go see what I want, and on my own time, and if that required Netflix, so be it.