The quick, summarized versions of reviews are useful in giving as broad an impression of critical opinion as is likely possible, at least right now, so far as anyone has tried. It’s important to remember these things offer breadth, not necessarily depth. The range of perspectives is the crucial feature of aggregators, rather than the assessment of each one. Metacritic offers a commendable balance of these two things, poring over reviews and assigning weight to each according to its own gravitas, as it were. More serious writers and respected thinkers have a larger determining factor on a film’s final review score. This way we get a fairly sizable collection of reputable opinions that get stirred together to produce a sense of what the “experts” are thinking, and this often appropriately reflects the mixed nature of this melting pot of opinion.
Rotten Tomatoes does something a little different but is still worthwhile and informative. It casts a wider net to include an even more far-reaching and diverse range of reviews (including those written by the fine writers at the site you are reading right presently). There’s value in identifying a popular opinion based on a less elite (or elitist) swath of publications. It’s not as populist as a simple IMDb voter rating number, but still a nice collection of people who feel strongly enough about movies and movie quality to put fingers to keyboard and share their thoughts. That’s worth something. It has to be considered differently as well, with a 100% rating referring to everyone liking a movie at least a little bit. That’s going to be different than a 50% rating split between those who hail a movie as the best of all time and others who believe it to be overrated junk. But if we’re clear on what a rating actually means, then we’re able to gather information from it. It’s not rocket science.
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Published: Mar 28, 2013 12:46 pm