News
Ranking films irks reviewers, liked by audiences
By Robert Marich
Jan 23, 2009 – Film critics assigning scaled ratings to films – anything from a number 1-5 to thumbs up/down – dates back to the New York Daily News in 1928, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Film critic rankings have evolved into various scales or “star” systems; that’s stars as in one star bad and five stars tops.
“Critics tend to loathe the system and succumb to it at the same time,” notes the article by Carl Bialik. “It all makes for an odd scale that, under the veneer of objective numerical measurement, is really just an apples-to-oranges mess. On Metacritic, best-picture nominee The Reader is tied with the latest James Bond flick. On Rotten Tomatoes, the drama tied with the dog-man buddy comedy Marley & Me.”
Film critics – including many whose employers force them to rank films on some sort of scale – decry these simple ratings, but not moviegoers. For example, magazines, newspapers and websites collect ratings from various film critics that are presented in a single table. It should be pointed out restaurant critics seem comfortable with similar star system scales.
Marketing to Moviegoers notes very few films skip pre-release screenings for critics, even films aimed at low-brow audiences that high-brow critics will dismiss. “Critics panned Wild Hogs, The Matrix Reloaded and Pearl Harbor, but those films proved ‘review proof’ and became blockbusters anyway,” says the book, which adds that any screening with media at least creates some awareness and buzz.
Roger Ebert – perhaps America’s top film critic and winner of a Pulitzer Prize -- himself is no fan of the star system. “I don’t know where the stars come from, but they’re absurd,” he is quoted in the WSJ article. “Often, people will cite my stars who obviously have not read my review.” In the past, he has called his own thumbs up/thumbs down system “wacky” but acknowledged it answered the basic question many review readers ask.
Indeed, audiences that follow critic reviews sometimes don’t want to read or hear extensive commentary because they don’t want to ruin the surprises in films. They just want its rating to see if critic feels it is good or bad.
“Today, the ‘star’ system is ubiquitous but far from simple for critics who must fit an Oscar hopeful and a low-ambition horror movie on the same scale,” notes the WSJ article.
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online.wsj.com/article/SB123265679206407369.html