So critics are more willing to give bland but inoffensive kids movies a pass than audiences? I guess this makes sense if the target audience for a movie is too young to be making online reviews.
All the links in the post seem to be broken for me?
Example: “post” links to “http://boingboing.net/2014/05/14/rcharts.io/viewer/?6c9ed5eed37fe3c03fa5#.U3ETVK1dVOy” but it SHOULD just link to “rcharts.io/viewer/?6c9ed5eed37fe3c03fa5#.U3ETVK1dVOy”, presumably. Looks like they were linked as internal links accidentally.
Critics and Joe Public agree half the time: R2 = r times r = the variation in Critics’ ratings explained by Joe Public’s ratings. R2 = 0.71*0.71 = 0.5.
Huff huff! etc.
I’m so baffled by this. Babe?? I was fortunate enough to be the mom whose kid got fixated on THIS movie, not Barney. So when I say that I have watched that movie a whole bunch of times, I mean, a whole lotta bunch of times.And that is one kick butt movie. Not many children’s films will stand up to that may viewings by an adult.
In general it seems that audiences are not very appreciative of children’s movies that are not Disney and it shows how hard it is to break out of that box - the Spy Kids franchise was made independently and very cheaply but creatively. So yes, compared to a mega zillions Disney release they don’t compare in production values, but having some heart and trying to break out of the usual routes for financing a movie - two thumbs way up.
Both of those lists have shattered my remaining faith in humanity.
Right, but critics also view these movies with a very different perspective than most of the regular adults that see them - most of the normal adult audience for kids movies (other than perhaps Disney and Pixar movies, which have an adult following) is parents, who are likely to be annoyed by them (or find them bland and inoffensive at best), especially if their kids want to watch them repeatedly.
If you’re really into movies as I am, it can be very interesting to watch one of these kids movies that you’d normally dismiss entirely without a second thought but which critics rate highly. Compare them to true classics of the genre - often the newer ones are more complex, have better stories and scripts, surprisingly deep themes, better acting, everything. Many of the older children’s films do have those things too (e.g. the original Willy Wonka film, where the remake is the one lacking those things) but most are pretty bad.
Anyway the point is, by the metrics that critics rate films by, these are legitimately good films and aren’t actually “bland but inoffensive”. Those that are are rated accordingly (and really, most kids movies definitely still fall in that category). You’re not really missing out if you don’t see them, but they’d be worth paying closer attention to if you had to watch something with a kid.
I think the data bears this out really well. Dumb adults rate extremely dumb adult movies highly while dismissing potentially-actually-good kid’s films without giving them a fair chance. I don’t mean to actually harshly judge anyone who rates those dumb movies highly, because a couple of them are things I enjoyed, but they are downright bad regardless 
I’ve seen hardly any of the films on either of these lists, but I’d find it hard not to judge someone who didn’t like The Tailor of Panama.
That said, King Kong was terrible and any critic who liked it needs a new profession.
It depends what you consider agreement… far less than 50% of the data points would fall on the actual 1:1 line.
This has got to be the dumbest use of statistics ever; while the “audiences loved” list is pretty obvious, the “critics loved” list makes no sense. Spy Kids, Babe, Splash… these were all huge box office successes. I assume (since the links are broken) this guy is comparing user reviews on RT with critical ones…? Which is ridiculous; user reviews are not an accurate gauge of public interest, they’re an accurate gauge of the few internet geeks who want their strong opinions to be heard so they bother to create an account on RT.
There are thousands of esoteric, but commercially-available films that critics love and audiences hate. More to the point, the takeway of this little experiment is… no shit, sherlock. The masses are morons!
““Overrated” and “underrated” are slippery terms to try to quantify.”
Well, I think “The Godfather” is overrated, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad film-- it’s still a great film but I just don’t think it’s quite as great as so many people insist.
What surprises me most about this chart is how many crappy films are rated highly by both critics and fans.
Same for me, except that I’m not even remotely surprised.
Just going to leave this here…
Hunh…
You are confusing the trend (the regression line itself) with the association (variation about that line). I wonder why the original article did not take an ROC approach to assessing agreement?
I don’t think so… a 1:1 line wouldn’t be the regression line. So I’m not sure what I’m confusing. Was just pointing out that the author’s definition of agreement was different than yours. I would speculate that he just used a correlation because regression is usually used when a causal relationship is implied between the variables. Maybe he didn’t want to imply that critic’s reviews affected audience reviews?
Personally (and rather obviously) my fav thread/topic on boingboing.
Empire Records fucking sucks. Audiences are stupid and I find reading meta critic and the imdb ratings of a movie give you a wayyyyyyyy more accurate assessment of a movie than rotten tomatoes.
Critics aren’t rating movies against all other movies (as audiences are), they are rating a movie within its specific category. That’s why there’s a bunch of kids movies in there because there are good kids movies and bad kids movies and the audience rating them online are going to be adults more than kids.
If you’ve not seen it watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Fits your explanation about kids movies perfectly. I was blown away by how nice every aspect of that movie is.
You’re too nice man. I’m judging and ridiculing anyone who rates Step Up
BTW: Rotten Tomatoes is not a hidden nerd-cave of the internet. You can log in with facefuck book
