IMDB reflects popular opinion. Everyone has unpopular opinions, heck I liked the Emoji movie. Also, for some niche movies the ratings are wildly skewed since only die hard fans are voting on them. And for some movies where there are strongly held opinions, many people will pile-on and vote on them without even having seen the movie.
All that said, IMDB is a useful tool for getting read on popular opinion on movies. Also, IMDB is standing behind me with a gun to my head. Send help, please.
I don’t trust IMDB after Amazon bought it. Maybe a company that makes movies shouldn’t be in charge of rating them? Conflict of interest maybe?
Hudson Hawk, widely panned, is fun; just refuses to take itself seriously.
-
iMDB: 5.7/10
-
RT: 30/100
-
Metacritic:17/100
I don’t care. That’s what I think of any film rating system. It’s a report, but not the experience itself.
See also: the Southland Tales, The One (2001), Lost Souls (2000). All are, objectively, bad films. And yet… I remember them to be re-watchable.
This write-up is on a site for and app and ends up shilling for that app, but it makes some useful points, confirmed by my years of poking around:
Trust Metacritic most for prestige drama, arthouse cinema, and Oscar contenders.
Trust IMDb most for genre films.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer as a quick pass/fail for critical reception.
Use the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score cautiously.
Full disclosure: I don’t have the app, don’t want the app, and don’t care about the app. Also, I skimmed the article in 2 minutes while watching my kids bounce on a trampoline.
-
I really like The Postman, but I was surprised it had fairly negative reviews
IGN 6/10 review for Mouse: PI
Imbd giving 28 years later 7.3/10 is crazy
I saw “The Bride” in theaters a few months ago and the fact that that movie ISN’T a 0 on imdb invalidates the whole concept of critic reviews for me. Worst movie I have ever seen (and I’ve seen “The Room” twice)
For me, it was the movie AVP2, that was way worse than it’s IMDB rating.
Oh, hi Mark
You’re my favorite customer
Sad that IMDB now hide the user opinions behind their login screen. A score alone isn’t helpful at all.
wait till you find about filmaffinity
i stopped thinking imdb or rating for entertainment as “how good it is” but rather “the odds of me liking it” i’ve seen plenty 5 or 6 imdb but i absolutely love it. and 9s as meh.
Exactly. Critics are only useful if your opinions are similar to the critics.
Remember, even in recent years movies have been review-bombed for being “woke”, for instance, with hordes of people upset about things that are not important to the movie, attempting to destroy the reputation of the movie rather than evaluate it fairly on its own merits.
I was just watching facts behind “Robin Hood men in tights”, and apparently Siskel gave it half a star, which is absolutely insane. It’s no blazing saddles, but it’s one of the better Mel Brooks movies
So yeah, review scores are basically a good way to decide whether you should go to the theaters and watch it or wait till it’s on streaming. But outside of that, it’s not a good indicator of whether or not you’re going to enjoy the show.
I feel IMDB ratings for new movies are ridiculously gamed / paid-for. Like the amazon reviews scandal all over again.
I’ll be the contrarian and say IMDb ratings are pretty accurate for me. The two exceptions are super inflated Cinema™ ratings and middling ratings for comedies. A 9.3/10 silent era movie gets too much credit for having functional lighting while a 6/10 comedy gets panned for its shallow character development.
IMDb is charitable and fairly reasonable and accurate compared to Rotten Tomatoes.
Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator. They don’t decide what score the movie will have. The critics submit their reviews and the score is the percentage of critics who’s own score is at or above 60%. It also shows the average rating. I think having hese two metrics is a great way to actually see if a movie is worth watching.
I also check out IMDb scores but it shows that it’s mostly generated by regular users. And the average user doesn’t know jack about cinema. Just looking at the top 250 : how is Shawshank the best movie of all time ? It’s a great movie, but come on… just in general there are so many average movies that rank way too high while actual masterpieces are under the 100th position. It’s not a ranking of the best movies OAT, it’s a ranking of the most agreeable movies OAT.
Edit : The score is calculated on if a review is positive or negative. It does not specify what score is considered a positive review, I guess it is up to the critic submitting it. They also removed last year the average calculator which is sad…
