Misunderstanding Rotten Tomatoes

I never really paid much attention to RottenTomatoes rating system before, but I nearly always consulted it prior to watching a movie – just to see the overall score, not the other details. It was usually fairly in line with my thoughts in the end, but of course with probably a 1/3rd or so where my opinion was completely opposite, which I expect with any review system.

Anyhoo prior to picking between this movie and some other, I saw that Her had 97 at the time – so I was like “whoa, must be amazing!”.

Watched the film, thought it was good, but nothing special – certainly not a 97/100, maybe 3.5/5 stars. Then it finally dawned on me that this wasn’t a combined rating, it was only a %age of people who didn’t hate it. So in the end all that 97% meant was that basically nobody thinks it sucks, it’s nothing even close to a reflection of whether the movie is actually good or great – just that it’s non-controversial.

Yeah I know, sounds retarded of me, but I never thought that far about the ratings before, and makes me wonder if I was the only one on the planet who was this dumb.

Also explains a lot, seeing movies I love getting like 30% and stuff like that – all this time I’d figured that sure, some people won’t like it, but surely it’s not a bad movie…? In the end it could have gotten 3/5 stars from 70 people and 5/5 stars from 30 people, and the final result would be 30% – which is hardly indicative of a movie that averaged a score of 3.5-4/5.

TL;DR – the inoffensive and generally enjoyable movie Her taught me that RottenTomatoes Tomatometer should be ignored, unless you’re just looking for a movie that everyone likes doesn’t hate.

Source: r/TrueFilm