Movies and Rating Systems

[GeffreyDrogon]

You know, I am not very fond of rating systems that rate a film's quality. I honestly think CinemaScore is one of the biggest offenders. How does something like Fantastic Mr. Fox get a B+ when garbage like Spirit Untamed gets an A- rating?

I am already not fond of Rotten Tomatoes, but I think IMDB is better. What do you all think?

[EricJ]

...You DO know CinemaScore comes from theater-audience polls, don't you?

[Ben]

All movie "ratings", criticism and commentary is only an amplified personal opinion of what someone felt at that particular time.

To take your two CinemaScore examples and build on Eric's point: Fox's audiences would have been filled mostly with families and young adults who went for Wes Anderson. Many of the families, I would imagine, would have been baffled by the film, so their score wouldn’t have been very "good" towards it. The Anderfans would have rated it much higher, but with the family score bringing the average down you end up with a B+, which is still a great score for a quirky, left of mainstream film.

Compare that with Spirit, where the audience was mostly horse-crazy young girls who wouldn’t know what criticism was unless you told them their shoes didn’t go with the dress they were wearing. Of course they’re going to love that movie and give it a high score, because it’s all subjective. The only reason it probably didn’t get an A+ is because the parents who had to suffer through it maybe brought that average down, but at the end of the day, there’s not much in it: it's only one peg difference between a B+ and an A-…!

[EricJ]

To take your two CinemaScore examples and build on Eric's point: Fox's audiences would have been filled mostly with families and young adults who went for Wes Anderson. Many of the families, I would imagine, would have been baffled by the film,

I was in said audience, on a Sunday matinee, for the same reason as most of the parents with kids and (ding!) correct for five points. They were.
The only reaction was the kids giggling every time that one character's eyes glazed over, as I'm sure most of the moms' were at that point.

And this was around the same general time as we were naively hopeful enough to think Spike Jonze would do a faithful, family-friendly Sendak-nostalgic version of "Where the Wild Things Are".

[Ben]

Baffling isn’t even the word for THAT one! I still don’t think I’ve made it all the way through…

[GeffreyDrogon]

I always find Cinemascore a weird movie rating system because it cherry-picks a particular demographic of a movie's audience, and not the audience as a whole. That's why I prefer IMDb.

[Randall]

And as for RT, so many people still don't seem to understand how the Tomatometer works. Of course, studios like to market their films to build on that misconception. The Tomatometer is fine for what it is, but it doesn't really rate films at all. It's simply a percentage of how many critics gave a film a positive score, whether a lukewarm recommendation or a rave. (Likely/hopefully everyone here is fully aware of that fact!)

And at the end of the day, I don't really care how a film is scored. It's fun to read and share opinions, but it really only matters whether I liked the film or not.

[GeffreyDrogon]

Honestly, I agree with you. For example, I don't think that Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is that bad, though I do think they have flaws.

[Farerb]

Rotten Tomatoes does have a rating score for each movie but it seems that most people don't care or are not aware of it, but to be fair RT hides it as well.

[Farerb]

Honestly, I agree with you. For example, I don't think that Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy is that bad, though I do think they have flaws.

There's a good two movies there among all the bloat, which is why I prefer to watch the fan edit that edits out all the unnecessary stuff.

[GeffreyDrogon]

I find it funny how strangely CinemaScore functions as a film quality rating system. Mediocre kiddie fare like Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is bombing despite getting an A- score while Joker made over a billion despite having a grade one point lower than that film.