What’s Wrong With Rotten Tomatoes

Posted by on April 11th, 2006   Filed under: Features, Internet, Movies

And now for something completely different… an editorial about movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. With more and more self-appointed movie critics popping up online every day, it is increasingly difficult to know where to look for the most reliable and informative reviews. This has lead to the proliferation of review aggregator sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic (and GameRankings for video games), which today are among the most popular sources for reviews on the net. Clearly people have a desire to see the general consensus among many different critics, no doubt under the assumption that greater wisdom can be gained through higher numbers. But how useful is the Tomato-meter, really? One of the biggest problems I find is that the rating percentage can be skewed when there are a lower number of reviews for a particular film (perhaps it is only a limited release, or hasn’t actually hit theatres yet). People look at the percentage and take it as a definitive score, but they don’t realize that the number is constantly in flux. A movie might be sitting at 70% a few days before it hits theatres, but then a couple days afterwards it has suddenly dropped to below 50% because more people have seen it and given it a thumbs down.

Also, different reviewers use different rating systems. Just because you can mathematically translate a 4 or 5 star scale to a percentage, doesn’t mean they necessarily equate to the same thing. Thirdly, how reliable are each of the critics in the RT database? While they all need to be accredited in some way to be used on the site, they vary wildly in terms of movie knowledge, experience, and genre bias. The fact that they all weigh equally on the final outcome seems a little silly. Rotten Tomatoes does give you the ability to pick your own favourite critics and just average their scores, which is a little more practical. However, I highly doubt many people use this feature (I know I don’t).

Lastly, the site reduces each individual review to nothing more than a number and a one-sentence blurb. While this is probably all most people want to read anyway, it can completely misrepresent a particular critic’s view. While you can click to read each review in full, realistically there’s no way anyone is going to read them all.

I often wonder how much of an influence a site like Rotten Tomatoes has on people when they write their own reviews as well. There’s certainly nothing wrong with critics reading the opinions of colleagues to contextualize their own writing, but I think it’s hard not to be swayed one way or another when you see a general consensus on a site like RT. It may not be a conscious thing, but I think Rotten Tomatoes can lead to a self-perpetuating cycle of reviews that become extremely one-sided.

I’m not saying Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t have its uses, but I definitely have a problem with people who live and die by the Tomato-meter. It’s a tool and nothing more, it is by no means an ultimate compendium of movie wisdom. Personally I prefer the Movie Review Query Engine, which catalogs reviews from a variety of sources but does not make any additional claims about overall opinions of the movie. What are your thoughts? Do you use Rotten Tomatoes on a regular basis, and why?



  • Leo

    Good observation.

    I check Rotten Tomatoes just about every time I go see a movie. I always wondered how RT determines how a review lands on the tomato-meter. Sometimes it shows the fresh tomato icon, yet the one line summary trashes the movie. Typo, maybe?

    Worse: respected critics are valued the same as lame-o nobodies: Roger Ebert is equal to the San Jose Mercury News? I think not. (SJ Mercury has the worst movie critic in the US – I know because I read the paper for 2 years). So now I just look at the “Cream of the Crop” on the right side of the page for the more prominent reviewers.

    Earlier today I checked out “Inside Man.” I peeked at the high 89% rating which locked in my decision to purchase a $5 matinee ticket. However, I was disappointed after seeing that film today; it deserved a 60% rating at best. At least Ebert didn’t like it.

    Then there are those movies that just don’t matter if they have a high rating or not, I’m gonna watch ‘em: Xmen and Pirates of the Caribbean, to name a few.

    Either way it doesn’t matter. RT is an excellent place for a general consensus on a movie, one that you must take with a grain of salt.

    The other site, MRQE, is just ugly – it doesn’t seem very user-friendly. There are no box-office charts, no upcoming movie listings, no veggies on the page, and it took FOREVER to query. Appears to be more like a boring homework assignment than a cool, hip movie website.

    (I don’t even bother with RT’s video game reviews, they need to just drop that. Gamespot is monumentally better.)

    Oh, and great site guys!

  • Hey Leo, thanks for the comments. Personally I liked Inside Man a lot, but again that 89% on Rotten Tomatoes is probably a bit misleading, since as you pointed out, there were some prominent critics who didn’t like it.

    Same thing happened with Slither. It’s still sitting around 84% but I find it hard to believe that the average movie-goer will walk into that movie and really enjoy it. Again, I liked it a lot myself but RT is not foolproof.

    As for MRQE, it does only one thing and it does it well. Sometimes it’s more about functionality than it is about how nice something looks. I still visit Rotten Tomatoes a lot though, probably for some of the other things you mentioned like upcoming movie listings, etc.

  • Bo

    Rotten Tomatoes is HORRIBLY inaccurate and out of touch from what NORMAL, everyday Americans like to watch. The worse the movie, the more foul and septic, the better RT rates it.
    An amazing study of how out of touch with everyday citizens the web can get.

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  • jeff

    Rotten tomato is the worst for me. The tomato meter is so useless and misleading. Their critics are definitely genre bias as you said.

    Just like when they are reviewing comedies their critics looks for an intelligent plot, depth etc. Well comedies should be funny(period) with or without the deep plot. And if you laughed a lot on a movie then it’s good.

  • philbah

    I wish that the critics could provide an understandable criticism without resorting to absurd metaphors and what they percieve to be witty lines. I want to know why the film is bad or good not “Often masterful in its distillation of exposition into pure sight and sound energy… but equally frustrating in its attention-grabbing lack of focus”. I know you shouldn’t focus on catering for the lowest common denominator but this sort of tripe reveals nothing.

  • Mark

    I liked Rotten Tomatoes until recently, when the deodorant adverts featuring large breasted women appeared. I quite like large-breasted women…. but it’s not what I’m looking for when I visit a film review website. And my other half finds it degrading. Is this a film review or soft porn website? I won’t be visiting again until the adverts change. Enough rotten tomatoes.

  • CynicalCritic

    One of the inconsistencies that I don’t understand about RT’s analytics is how, for example, two critics can give the same rating to a movie, but their icons are different.

    For example, both Kyle Smith of the New York Post and Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger gave “Miss Bala” 2.5 out of 4 stars, but Smith’s review received the “tomato” icon, while Whitty’s review received the “splat” icon.

  • L. Dave

    I disagree with what Sean says. Whilst I think most of his criticisms are perfectly legitimate, his problem isn’t with rotten tomatoes itself but more the consumerism behaviors of contemporary movie goers. He blames rotten tomatoes for things that aren’t really the websites fault.

  • Joe

    rotten tomatoes is horribly inaccurate and had no idea what they are talking about. Its just a forum for corrupt movie critics to lie and promote their movies. They can’t take criticism either which is hilarious!!!! There should be a boycott. LOL

  • Epifanio

    I’m agree with Sean and some people in previews replies, I used to watch rotten tomatoes until I found several movies only-commertial awful movies like borat with 91% ?? transformers 57%?? Truffaut, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Scorsese, Bergman, Goddard, Wenders, Wilder, Hawks (and so on) would not give even a 10% to any of those movies. Rotten Tomatoes is about commertial movies, the critics are so superficial i’d rather filmaffinity (but it is in spanish) there are really good critics, not those narcisists that put a label “the best critic of whole world” (I am not kidding check it at rotten tomatoes), the bests critics of whole world score tranformers 57%? or the world is going pretty wrong, of those critics don’t know anything about movies, it is a business, there are no independent critics at all in that websit

  • Scot

    RE: Rotten Tomatoes

    Though this article has been published for quite sometime I want to thank you for it. My experience with Rotten Tomatoes has not been good and has less to do with skewed ratings and is more concerning the RT site navigation. Wanted to create a good “Want to See” list and went to the “Upcoming Movies” page to do so. However, there is no way to quickly add films from the Upcoming list to your Want to See list. One has to click into and then back out of each individual films’ page to add it to any list. CLUNKY! Additionally there is no Back To Top button. Very frustrating.

  • avid movie watcher…

    good post. rotten tomato has lost its credibility with me.

  • Herbert Walker Esmahan

    If you want accurate movie reviews visit IMDB

  • drew

    Completely agree. I visit rotten tomatoes and am often baffled at how some movies got rotten scores (pun intended I think)

  • Tallman

    I once depended religiously on RT. I soon kicked the habit when I saw some good movies getting poor ratings and ok movies getting great ratings. I prefer IMDb – apparently ordinary folks like us are generally better at rating movies.

  • Saman Sh

    It’s been quite a while i have been visiting RT frequently ,and you are absolutely right ,just summarizing all the reviews written by different critics in a percentage doesn’t sound rational to me too.the number of the critics rating a movie is of another issue ,and of course i have watched quite amazing movies which have been poorly rated by RT.Honestly to date ,i can not remember changing my mind about a movie solely by the ratings of RT, i have been impressed by the reviews of it’s critics ,some of whom are quite fair ,but the number itself doesn’t work for me.

  • hardy

    if scores are both above 50%, I read 4-5 positive and 4-5 negative reviews and it usually helps me to decide if I want to watch the movie or not. If they are below 50, I don’t give it a chance. Have seen over 750 movies in my life, so I don’t want to waste time on something I already know a much better version of.. usually I go for the ones that have been rated above 80. But I agree, they could just leave it at x out of 5.

  • rc25346978

    if the score is really low, like a 10%, the movie was probably great for young people looking for an easy laugh but hated by the reviewers looking for a story. if it was really high, like 90% or higher, than the story was probably “deep” and “thought provoking” but was hard to appreciate unless a doctor of English or something. the sweet spot is the 50-70 maybe 80 range where a lot of demographics, young, old, male, female, liked it and you probably will too.

  • Fred

    I always had a problem with rotten tomatoes… I mean, it’s good to be able to see the plot, the trailer, and to have a general opinion, but some people are more seeing that website like the bible itself ! How many times did I want to see a movie and my bf was “it’s only xx% on rotten tomatoes, so I don’t want to see it” :| I guess I prefer to lose my time and to hit the “stop” button in the middle of a movie I don’t like than just not watching it because it has a low score on RT ! Because it’s NOT only about technical stuff… It’s also a matter of taste ! I HATED some moves highly rated and I LOVED some who were under 10%… But maybe I just prefer to discover things by myself !

  • Rupert Pupkin

    What? No. Disney’s heavy hitter films almost always score in the nineties and are the definition of crowd pleasers. Other pop-entertainment like Hunger Games and many of the Harry Potter films have also nabbed scores above 90%. Experimental and extremely intellectual films divide critics just as much if not more than films made for general audiences.

  • Avery Haqq

    Rotten Tomatoes is HEAVILY biased against Christianity, and against most religious movies in general with the exception of a few. Here’s a good example, there are two movies that are UNREVIEWED and they come out both in 3 days. Son of God, and Repentance, BOTH are of religious tone and of a religious nature, GUESS WHAT? NO critic reviews for those movies, but EVERY OTHER MOVIE HAS A REVIEW! I smell anti-religious bias.

  • zmaestro

    I hate Rotten. All bad and stupid narcissists on board. Nothing worth junk opinions and self appointing ballooning Siskel&Eberts……

  • Guest

    Ever notice how Pitt’s films always get high praise but the films always BOMB! Everytime I use an RT score to judge a movie I am always WRONG! I have seen some real stink bombs because of them.

  • Anonymouse Carroticus

    Rotten Tomatoes is terribly unreliable. The reviewers give top ratings to standard movies, rating down any movies that are truly unique, and sometimes I think they rate down movie sequels simply because they are sequels.

    I’ve watched plenty of movies rated below 20% by the reviewers, and found them to be thoroughly entertaining… Review ratings don’t reflect public enjoyment (“20% of critics liked it, 95% of people liked it).

  • Imaad Shahrukh

    Rotten Tomatoes is so unreliable that people who review in it have no taste in films. They give good movies like Taken 2, Killer Elite and Jumanji low ratings. They tend to give bad movies like Justin Bieber Never Say Never, Around the World in 80 Days remake, The Dark Knight Rises and Iron Man 3 high ratings or ratings higher than good movies.

  • feralcatadvocate47

    I encountered similar results when recently researching reviews for “Behind The Mask”; only it’s not that it was unreviewed, but unfairly panned by a clearly biased anti-Christian militant feminist (www.flickfilosopher.com). I’m not sure what she was expecting when she chose that particular movie to view, unless she just wanted a vehicle in which to set up her straw-man arguments to knock down.

    Actually it was the first time I had consulted rottentomatoes.com in years; and it just served to remind me why I’d originally decided to stay away, lol. For more fair reviews on faith-based and family-friendly films, I normally go to Focus on the Family’s pluggedin.com or Christian Spotlight on the Movies – http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/ …Have you tried those?

  • sabretruthtiger

    The critics are disgustingly liberal and give anything with a feminist angle a high rating.

  • Anthony Cabrera

    Teen Beach Movie: 86%
    Sharknado: 82%

    Fight Club: 80%
    Die Hard 3: 51%

    Teen Beach Movie and Sharknado both have a higher score than Fight Club and Die Hard 3.
    WTF

  • Frank Weed

    They rate the movies accordingly to their genre and expectations. Every critic is aware that Sharknado is purposely absurd and “bad” and because the movie does it job well, it’s rated highly. Now Die Hard 3 is a somewhat disappointing sequel from a great movie, they had higher expectations. I’m not saying I agree with the method they use, I’m just explaining it, I think it’s terribly missleading.

  • Zho

    Rotten tomatoes is shit. Never watch a movie based on their say or you’ll either be very surprised or very disappointed. Or just both.

  • Yurallstupid

    No matter how bad, boring or mediocre; for some reason, if the film says MARVEL’s, RT will fight for the film to not only remain fresh, but at undeserving high percentages. Hypercritical with non-marvel studio comic films and other action-adventures, but inexplicably forgiving and overly generous with Marvel’s cinematic universe.

  • Goodwin Lu

    if movie-rating websites were movie critics
    Rotten Tomatoes: “Yea, I only account whether the people liked it or not. I don’t care about how much they like it. At least every other week there’s a classic near-perfect movie and an absolutely horrid movie.”
    Metacritic: “I converted these guy’s vague star and grade ratings to actual ratings out of 100, so that most movies are only in the middle. Hey, most movies aren’t on the extremes anyways.”
    IMDB: “I have statistically correct and carefully weighted results of both critic’s and audience reviews on my movies. Not only so, I even present a bare minimum to have a movie in the top 250 list, ensuring as accurate as possible before you look out for the best of the best.”

  • James

    Lol you actually rely on reviews written by movie critics???? Bahahahaaaa!!! You must live a very sorry and stuffy life, my friend. Step away from the critics and try living your life for once (ie read reviews written by real people. It will actually tell you something about the movie.)

  • Aoudia Oussama

    how the fuck you can rat a movie before he is out .we all know that critics like ‘rotten tomatoes’ are rotten !!

  • Angela Morris

    Rotten Tomatoes is a rotten group of so called critics. They are bias. Their reviews are not based as how well the movie is made, the plot, great acting and many other things, we, the audience look for in a movie. I watch a lot of movies on iTunes and these critics had gotten on my nerves but tonight after I finished watching 13 HOURS, where this movie brought me so close to what happened in Benghazi and the great acting, I decided it’s time to write
    about this lousy Rotten Tomatoes.

  • ClinkinKY

    Rotten Tomatoes should just go ahead and change their name to: “Liberals Writing Reviews That Denigrate Movies Liked By Conservatives While Propping Up Movies That They Think Their Leftist Brethren Should See”, or is that too long:)

  • ClinkinKY

    If a movie shows the truth of what happens when one of their heroes fails (Hillary/Obama) they pan said movie.

    It’s what liberals do.

  • John Stovall

    To tell weather we ordinary folks would like them absolutely better. Even on Rotten tomatoes, the audience score is the one I look at if anything.

  • Ed McAninch

    Also The Bolsheviks over at Rotten Tomatoes give anything with a gay angle a high rating. Anything to promote their socialist values and left wing ideology.

  • Ed McAninch

    Sounds like a bunch left wingers.

  • Greg D’Avis

    Wow! You sure are one hell of a dumbass. Your pathetic trolling won’t get you the attention and feeling of superiority you’re hoping for…
    ????

  • ClinkinKY

    It got your attention didn’t it? ;)

  • CamCon97

    For Latino Civilizations class this semester, we were shown two movies, supposedly for reinforcing the reading. The movies were Camila (1984) and La Historia Oficial (1985), which were rated 87 and 100 respectively by RT. Meanwhile, RT gave 18 to For Greater Glory (2012). The way I see it, the movies in which liberals are persecuted and/or conservatives are depicted as the bad guys are favored by RT; when vice-versa, RT gives it a lousy rating.

    Welcome to the Politically-Correct Liberal States of America.

  • kill all liberals

    People like you should be killed..fucking crybaby ass nigger loving liberals