Can a film be rated with a number? The objective of film criticism seems to be to take a
film in its entirety and reduce it to a figure indicative of its
merits, where it can then be compared to other films. Yet, it's a system that works well enough in summing up
a critic's general sentiment, and I find Rotten Tomatoes to be an
invaluable source when it comes to carrying out cultural research.
Film ratings give the industry a deeper, richer character and
history; provoking debate, allocating cultural value, and reflecting
political and social realities. It's interesting to see how our ideas
of what films should be shape and are shaped by this. These are the
stories we live our lives by; this is what we want from our
escapism. The worlds we see on screen are often worlds we aspire to or rebel against;
worlds with resolution, worlds that follow a sense of logic. Cinema
is important because of our innate irrationality, we cannot help but
be affected by these fictions, and there are certainly some fictions
we prefer to others. This isn't to say that most critics simply hold
up hoops for films to jump through, but it is interesting when films
I would personally consider good are penalised for failing to do
something the right way. I've picked a few films which I
thought Rotten Tomatoes got wrong. Like Metacritic, the website takes
all the reviews it can find and condenses them into a single score,
so of course it isn't a definitive judgement. But, it is one of the
most reliable sources of public sentiment out there and, more often
than not, it precisely estimates a film's cultural value.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Score: 49%
Critics Consensus: Visually creative, but also aimless, repetitive, and devoid of character development.
In
the above verdict, they say "aimless, repetitive, and devoid of
character development" like it's a bad thing. The whole
objective of Fear and Loathing is to evoke a sense of
directionlessness, moral apathy and nausea. It's a picaresque romp
through a heart of darkness, throbbing in the corpulent body of the
motherland. Our hero, Raoul Duke, exposes the psyche of Las Vegas
through his constant chemical communion, exposing skeletons that fit
the role of both victim and perpetrator. Here we find the American
Dream dead, rotting on the roadside somewhere near Barstow. And in a world of bright, sugary neon, fetid debauchery and
slot machines, sobriety comes only through intoxication. In such a
world "character development" and "progress"
would only seem out of place.
Inside Out (2015)
Score: 98%
Critics Consensus: Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics.
Pixar,
once a beacon of hope in a landscape
otherwise populated by penny pushing executive-driven animation, has dulled
significantly over the years. It first showed signs of faltering with
the abysmal Disneyesque Cars. And then, after managing to
scrape out a few more good ones; Ratatouille, Wall-E,
and Up, it sighed and threw in the towel. Cars 2,
Brave, Monsters University, were the three following films which showed that Pixar had lost its mojo. Then, when
Inside Out was released in 2015, the near-hysterical response
would have you believe it was a majestic return to form. It wasn't.
Inside
Out isn't a bad film, on the contrary, it's quite a good one. But
the mass outpour of critical appraisal, resulting in a score of
98% on Rotten Tomatoes, seems thoroughly unjustified. While Pixar has
previously prided itself on ingenious ideas and sleek storytelling,
creating fantastically complex worlds and characters, Inside Out just
seemed too straightforward. Its central idea; exploring the role of
emotions in our lives, seemed contrived. The delight one gets from
experiencing the worlds created by Pixar is absent. The setting is
sugary and Disneyesque, and therein lies the problem.
Antichrist (2009)
Score: 50%
Critics Consensus: Gruesome, explicit and highly controversial; Lars Von Triers [sic] arthouse-horror; though beautifully shot, is no easy ride.
There
is hope for Horror, yet. A torrent of smart, innovative scary films
have revitalised the genre recently, and many have been commended for
it. Yet, one is left scratching their head when they find that one of
the ones leading the charge, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist,
wallows at a mere 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. There's perhaps something
at least vaguely prudish about this film's downrating. It won plenty
of awards in Europe, but US critical opinion seems viciously
polarised. A lot of critics didn't get on with the blend of Arthouse and Horror, concluding simply that it was pretentious. If one ponders
for too long on whether it's supposed to be one thing or another,
they miss out on the primal thrill of it. Roger Ebert's review for
the film got it right when he said
"Von
Trier, who has always been a provocateur, is driven to confront and
shake his audience more than any other serious filmmaker. He will do
this with sex, pain, boredom, theology and bizarre stylistic
experiments. And why not? We are at least convinced we're watching a
film precisely as he intended it, and not after a watering down by a
fearful studio executive."
In
the US, there is a bizarre, almost fetishistic divide between high
and low forms of cinema, one being "Art" and the other
"Entertainment". Alongside this is a Victorian-like
expectation of moral content, and films that reject this are cast out as "adolescent" and "exploitative".
European cinema is leaps and bounds ahead of this, a lot less afraid
of exploring human nature.
Ultimately
these numbers can't confer any conclusive sense of judgement upon a
film. The culture industry will always be able to dig up and
re-evaluate hidden treasures, and it often does. Likewise, films once
thought to be brilliant can fade into obscurity. Film criticism
stands apart from film itself, it can help shape popular opinion and
taste, but it can't stop artists from realising their visions and committing them to cinema. But criticism also shouldn't be thought of
as a mass of mutually agreed opinion. In each of the above films I
found views similar to my own, critics who disagreed with the
consensus. We need criticism but, more importantly, we need a diverse
array of opinions and perspectives. Critics are the ones who can soil
a film's reputation, but they are also the ones who can save it.
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