Real, unbiased, genuine reviews are necessary in society. They need to be trustworthy so we can tell the good from the bad. There’s always some subjectivity, but in general, this is understood by everyone.
The issue is when a source becomes too trusted, they’re vulnerable to corruption.
As a fair-weather movie fan, I’ve always deferred to Rotten Tomatoes; it’s the first thing that pops up when you Google a movie after all. But after today, the trust has officially been broken.
I initially began this post after seeing Sinners (I’ll get to that), but felt it wasn’t worth it. That was until I just finished Happy Gilmore 2.
Happy Gilmore 2 is terrible. It’s lazy, awkward, uninspired, rushed, and not funny. The first half was a 4/10 and the second half was a genuine 1/10. And trust me, I get it, no one is taking this movie that seriously, obviously it’s a CASH GRAB and I’m sure it was a blast getting everyone together like that, but this movie sucks.
Rotten Tomatoes currently has this as a 66% via real movie critics and a 74% via general audience. And I’m sorry, I do not believe it. I think the critic reviews are incentivized to say it’s good even if it sucks, and I think a lot of the audience reviews are genuinely bots. Take this one for example, who writes like this?!
Next Up is Sinners.
My brief take; this is an okay-to-good movie. I was bought in for the first hour; they did a great job building the story and the Michael B Jordans were captivating. But after that, it takes its turn and was a pretty generic and mostly confusing second half. There are some notable deeper themes that it tries to touch on, and if you want to tell me a certain slice of people will love this, I’m okay with that, but this isn’t some game changer.
Sinners has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. This rating reeks of a few things: A) wanting to sound smart, B) group think, and C) most importantly, people NOT giving good-faith, honest opinions about what they just saw.
So where does that leave me? Rotten Tomatoes has lost its credibility. You can’t call a 2.5/10 a 6.5/10, and you can’t call a 6.5/10 a 10/10. You may tell me that its been this way for the last 5 years ago, I have no idea, but it’s the most front-facing movie review platform and it’s been corrupted. By who or what, I don’t know.
I would say I’m moving to IMDB but they have HG2 as exactly a 6.5/10. We’re in a simulation.
Have you tried letterboxd?