Website Spotlight: Rotten Tomatoes

It’s quite a coincidence: I decided today to do Rotten Tomatoes for my third Website Spotlight and I found out that the site is going to be celebrating its tenth anniversary next month.

Long time readers would probably be well aware of my dislike for movie reviews. In fact, it was the very first article I wrote. I even mention Rotten Tomatoes in the article (I also said that I would never post movie reviews, which I eventually did decide to to, though I technically call them thoughts).

The goal of Rotten Tomatoes is to calculate the percentage of good (3 stars or more) and bad reviews and rate the film “Fresh” or “Rotten” accordingly (a film needs at least 60% good reviews to be “Fresh”).

Back in that 2004 article, I criticized Rotten Tomatoes’ method by saying that just because a film is rated “Fresh” or “Rotten” does not mean I will like or dislike a film.

A good example of this criticism is the film Hancock, which is currently rated “Rotten” even though I ended up liking the film.

However, I have to agree that Rotten Tomatoes is a better way of gauging whether or not to see a film than a single review on its own. It’s better to have many different opinions on a film than a single guys opinion.

While I still think people should make up their own minds whether or not to see a movie and not rely on the opinion of reviews, Rotten Tomatoes is the best place to go in order to get a summary of these opinions.