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Good/Great Movies That Don't Deserve Their “Rotten" Scores

April 26, 2024 Jordan Ruimy

For many, Rotten Tomatoes is the go-to place for deciding which movie they will spend their hard-earned money on. It’s come to the point where studios use "Tomatometer" scores in promotional material, including and especially trailers.

Yesterday, I wrote about studios now going on Rotten Tomatoes to determine if they should hire a filmmaker on any given project. Suffice to say, RT is inescapable, but to put it mildly, it’s not always right. Even though this fixture on the aggregate, and the importance that comes in having a “fresh” movie, does sometimes help actual good movies make more money, it can also unjustly tank one.

Just imagine a studio head not wanting to greenlight a project by Jonathan Glazer just because 2004’s “Birth,” a great film, nabbed a 39% RT score. Maybe that’s why he didn’t make a film for nine years after that one. Glazer’s film is just one of many examples.

Slow news day. I went down a little rabbit hole this afternoon and searched for good/great films with “rotten” scores. Obviously, this is all subjective, and I didn’t find every single one of them. There are probably hundreds of examples. Here are 24:

Birth 39%
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 51%
Basic Instinct 54%
Summer of Sam 51%
Antichrist 49%
Mars Attacks 56%
Babylon 56%
Blonde 42%
Funny Games 52%
Passion of the Christ 49%
Con Air 58%
The Burbs 53%
Jennifer’s Body 45%
Kids 46%
MacGruber 47%
Under the Silver Lake 59%
Vanilla Sky 42%
Marie Antoinette 57%
Kingdom of Heaven 39%
Gummo 37%
Enemy at The Gates 54%
Bamboozled 53%
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer 59%
I’m Still Here 53%

These 24 titles clearly have many detractors — there’s a reason why they’re rotten — and I’m expecting some readers to criticize my picks, but I believe them all to be strong films. Many of the above titles have had reappraisals, others will hopefully be rediscovered in the years to come, while the rest will live on with their bad reputations.

What are some of your personal favorite “rotten” flicks?

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