I’ve been kicking around on Flixster for a several months now, and I’ve noticed something that probably rates up there as today’s beef (and a few other todays as well…)
I’m running through a few quick rates, just trying to see how many films I have seen and still haven’t rated, how many films I want to see (but probably won’t have time for) and what kind of schlock might be listed that I should avoid seeing; and up comes this gem.
Now, I don’t want to pick too much on any one film, but I just gotta ask, what qualifies as a bad movie, Flixster? (after all, the slogan “Stop watching bad movies” appears after the Flixster logo on virtually every page) A routine search reveals that Rottentomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic all agree that Serving Sara is most likely a bad film. But the rating on Flixster is 3 stars, which equates to a generally positive watchable film. Even the (highly biased, negative) review on Flixster’s page paints a pretty grim picture of the film, and yet the people who have rated it seem loathe to give it the panning it seems to deserve.
The generic unwillingness to truly pan bad films is only one beef I have with Flixster. Duplication, like this one (Editor’s note: they did finally delete that duplicate. Possibly before they deleted most of the site) is another annoyance. I’m not interested in rating collections which are nothing more than boxed sets of movies I’ve already rated elsewhere. They should be roundfiled as duplicates.
The problem that I’m running into is that films that I can state unequivocally were garbage, based on a reasonably objective standard of measurement, do not get a low rating from others. Films that I hated, like Sin City or Four Brothers, for example. I guess they just aren’t bad enough.
However, with a little bit of perusing of the bottom 100 over at IMDB I stumbled across this little nugget of hell; Lawnmowerman 2, which I crowned the “king of the unnecessary sequels”. IMDB gives it 2 of 10 stars; rottentomatoes.com gives it 11% on the tomato meter. Flixster’s rating? 2 1/2 out of 5 stars. 50%!? Seriously Flixster, what’s the deal here?
Perhaps they should establish a bottom 100 list similar to the list at IMDB. Maybe that will encourage people to pan films that deserve to be ridiculed. Or perhaps the ratio of Interested to Not Interested should weight the overall star rating of a film (as an example that ratio on Lawnmower Man 2 is 297/3744; Serving Sarah ‘s ratio is 1083/5962) and reduce (or increase) a films rating based on who actually wants to see any particular film. Whatever the solution is, this problem needs to be addressed. Please guys, I’m begging you.
I am new to Flixster, but I was wondering the same thing. For example, I love the stupid movie, “The Giant Gila Monster,” but I know it is a pretty bad movie. Should I rate it according to MY personal love for the movie and give it 4 stars, or am I supposed to rate it according to my perception of its quality (probably one star, lol)?
That would be your decision to make. I’ve done it both ways on different sites. When I feel a movie has been panned undeservedly, I’ve kicked my rating up a few notches (never had that problem on Flixster) When I’ve felt a movie was decidedly unwatchable in spite of it’s high rating, I’ve panned it harder than I objectively have felt it deserved.
As a rule of thumb, I do try to be objective about film ratings, but statistically it really doesn’t matter. The sheer number of people who rate the films should rule out the occasional non-objective viewpoint.