My reasoning on Rotton Tomatoes rubbishness

[ReaperFett]

A simple test. saying I know 10 opinions from CC.net and swfans, I remember who liked, before comparing. The first four I thought of were used. Here we go:

M:I2
Only me and John liked this IIRC: 20%(rotton)
ROTTON TOMATOES SCORE: 62%(fresh)

FINAL FANTASY
Ive heard at least 6 say ok+, so: 60%(fresh)
ROTTON TOMATOES SCORE: 38%(rotton)

TOMB RAIDER
me and John liked, about 3 other said good: 50%(rotton I think)
ROTTON TOMATOES SCORE: 15%(rotten)

MYSTERY MEN
me, DT/FMH and Darth 23 worship:) :30%(rotton)
ROTTON TOMATOES SCORE: 64%(fresh)


now, we get an aver age deviation there of 33.25%. THATS A THIRD OFF! Now, this to me says you cant trust it

[JonathanLB]

That's not the real problem. The problem is they are making what should be an objective formula into a subjective one.

I mean, why the hell does it say "rotten" for The Phantom Menace when it should say "fresh"? With JP3, they said a 2.5 star review was "fresh" and they seem to do that for most movies, so how come they didn't for TPM?

There was HARDLY a critic on the face of the earth that gave TPM less than 2.5 stars and 90% of the reviews could be considered "fresh," or certainly should be. Instead, they chose to put any review that wasn't 3 stars into the "rotten" column and that's just incorrect.

You have to be really mistaken to believe TPM received poor reviews when the reviews were actually, on the whole, quite positive. Most critics gave it between 2.5 and 3 stars and said it was worth seeing, which is a positive review, maybe not a great review (it did have those too), but definitely fresh and not rotten.

Their way of calculating that is just moronic. I only read one review for TPM that was less than 2.5 stars. The rest were all higher than that for sure. Even David Ansen of Newsweek didn't give the film a bad review, he just didn't give it a good one either.

I like Rotten-Tomatoes as a general indicator, but it doesn't do that good of a job on films the creators apparently don't like (TPM must be in this category).

[Jedi Master Carr]

I agree with Jonathan. I also hate that to get a fresh rating a film has to get 60% rating and they call everthing else rotten. That is just wrong. TPM got like a 54 or so and to me that is mixed not rotten. I think they should add a third category saying mixed for all those movies falling in the 45-60 range. To me that would be more fair.

[JonathanLB]

Definitely. A film that received MORE THAN HALF positive reviews is NOT rotten!!! What kind of a stupid idiot would classify a film that MOST critics liked as a rotten movie, especially given that critics are generally harsher than moviegoers anyway?!

That site has some serious problems that could easily be worked out if they just took the time (5 minutes). lol.

In my opinion, any review above average is a positive review, any one below average is a negative review, and 2 stars is neither positive nor negative, so it should be in a category of its own and not count as either fresh or rotten.

If I give a film 2.5 stars, like Scary Movie, I am RECOMMENDING it to other moviegoers, but not strongly. I give many films that I did enjoy watching 2.5 stars and while I would not go tell my friends to see the film, if someone asked I'd say it was a pretty good movie worth seeing. That's not "rotten," so neither should any 2.5 star review be considered such.

It's a faulty system that doesn't yield the best results. Also, a film like Toy Story 2 gets almost entirely good reviews, but that doesn't mean it's better than a film that had 75% good reviews. It could be that the film with 75% good reviews was more controversial and therefore split critics between those who absolutely loved it and those who hated it. If 3/4 of the critics gave it 3.5 or 4 stars and 1/4 gave it less than 2 stars, then it's still probably a better film (for most people) than a movie where 100% of the critics gave it 2.5 stars or better.

I remember looking back over a BoxOfficeGuru report when Gladiator opened or sometime near then and he said something about how the movie received mixed reviews, or "fairly favorable reviews" or something like that. I thought that was extremely hilarious in retrospect considering he was talking about a Best Picture WINNER!