Rotten Tomatoes does not grade movies. There is no one behind the scenes at the website named Jeff Rottentomatoes giving “fresh” and “rotten” scores to films (although it would be pretty awesome if there was).
The number you see on each film’s page reflects the aggregated opinions of dozens and sometimes hundreds of film critics. Each individual critic’s review gets added into Rotten Tomatoes’ database, along with their positive or negative rating. The number of positive reviews out of the total number of reviews gives you each movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score. It’s as simple as that.
But simple does not necessarily mean expected. While plenty of films have exactly the Rotten Tomatoes score you’d expect (The Godfather? 97 percent. Gigli? 6 percent.), other films’ scores are inexplicable. These are movies that are beloved by the vast majority of the moviegoing public while getting shockingly dismissed by critics — or vice versa. Or they might be titles that are now revered as modern classics — that got obliterated by critics just a decade or two earlier.
Today at ScreenCrush we’re looking at 20 examples of movies whose Rotten Tomatoes scores, then or now, make no sense. Yes, Rotten Tomatoes scores are not like test scores. Still, when dozens of critics agree about a film in a way that feels so totally out of step with the broader consensus … it can be quite surprising.
20 Rotten Tomatoes Scores That Make No Sense
These scores from movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes are genuinely surprising.
READ MORE: 25 Movies With 100 Percent Scores on Rotten Tomatoes
20 Movies That Should Have Flopped That Became Massive Hits
These movies didn’t look like much on paper, then became some of the biggest hits ever.
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