We all know Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the end-all, be-all of film reviews, but it has become a very important starting point for a reason. The site is a review aggregator, collating movie reviews and scores and distilling them into a simple binary of “fresh” or “rotten.” However, because film criticism is not a science, the scores can be pretty surprising at a glance.
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If you search a movie online, you’ll likely see its Tomatometer score, represented as a percentage. That number is not the overall rating of the film — it’s the percentage of reviews that were considered positive overall. You have to dig a bit deeper into the site to see the movie’s average score, represented on a scale from 1 to 10. Most critics agree that no movie is perfect, so while you may see movies that are 100 percent “fresh,” you’ll probably never see one with an average rating of 10 out of 10.
That said, neither of these numbers can tell the full story. Movies themselves are very contextual, and so are the reviews. Most of the reviews you’ll see accounted for on Rotten Tomatoes came out around the same time as the movie itself, but some movies age well and are more beloved years after their release. On the flip side, some movies find their audiences years late and their scores change drastically — for better or worse. The scores can also be skewed by the overall number of reviews counted. Some movies suffer from obscurity, and other movies thrive on it.
It’s not news that Rotten Tomatoes is imperfect, but it’s interesting to get into the specifics. Below are 10 movies with Rotten Tomatoes scores that are either surprisingly low or surprisingly high, and our best guess as to why.
Tommy Boy – 39 Percent
The distance between the average critic’s score and the average audience member’s score is often the most interesting part of Rotten Tomatoes, and the 1995 comedy Tommy Boy is the perfect example. Somehow, it is only 39 percent positive out of 44 trusted critics, yet on the Popcornmeter it is 90 percent positive with over 250,000 user-submitted ratings. Given the movie’s legacy and that of its star Chris Farley, it’s clear that film reviewers three decades ago couldn’t see the full picture.
The Mighty Ducks – 27 Percent
These days, anyone who talks about The Mighty Ducks seems to love it, so how does the movie have only 27 percent positive ratings on Rotten Tomatoes? For one thing, the site only has 30 trusted reviews for this classic, and for another, we have to attribute at least some of this movie’s legacy to nostalgia. Still, the tides may be changing slowly but surely for the Ducks thanks to retrospective reviews. Out of all the scores counted up through 2009, only one was fresh, but since then positive reviews have trickled in from those who can judge the movie in hindsight.
Batman – 77 Percent
Superhero movies have evolved a lot over the years, but through it all the 1989 Batman starring Michael Keaton has remained a crowd-pleaser. Considering how often it is referenced and held up a positive example, it has a surprisingly mediocre score at 77 percent fresh. That’s counting 141 trusted critics, and the average rating matches up at 7 out of 10. These aren’t negative scores by any means, but they’re definitely surprising in comparison to this movie’s larger-than-life legacy.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – 38 Percent
Maybe Tokyo Drift deserves its 38 percent positive rating if you’re judging it as a movie, but if you’re judging it as a Fast & Furious movie specifically, it deserves better. Fans might have a knee-jerk reaction to this score if they’re not seeing the context, especially if they just got into this goofy franchise recently. However, it’s worth remember that at the time, Tokyo Drift was disappointing to fans who wanted to see more Dom and Brian. In hindsight, however, it’s a fun stand-alone episode and a shining example of early-2000s nostalgia.
National Treasure – 46 Percent
Again, National Treasure‘s legacy has only improved since its release, to the point where a 46 percent fresh score seems wrong. The Popcornmeter feels more fair — 76 percent positive out of over a quarter million user-submitted reviews. Those don’t seem to be ironic or blindly positive scores, either — fans gave the movie an average of 3.8 out of 5 stars, while critics have given it just 5.3 out of 10. However, this is a special case where movie fans are looking for something a little silly and hokey.
The Beekeeper – 71 Percent
If you saw this year’s action thriller The Beekeeper starring Jason Statham, my condolences. This movie could have been fun, silly and cartoonish, or it could have been yet another John Wick rip-off. In either case it would have been a forgivably average experience. Instead, it played outrageous premise too earnestly while undercutting its serious moments with very specific but uninspired worldbuilding. Along the way, it betrayed the creators’ social and inter-generational biases, and they were not pretty.
Somehow, The Beekeeper is an overall success. It grossed $152.7 million against a $40 million budget, and even more shockingly, it has “generally positive reviews.” It has a shocking 71 percent fresh score on the Tomatometer, with an average rating of 5.9 out of 10 out of 181 reviews from verified critics. In fairness, the movie is certified rotten among RT’s “top critics, at 57 percent positive with an average score of 5 out of 10. However, the real tragedy is the audience score — over 2,500 verified RT users gave The Beeekeeper 92 percent positive, with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. All in all, it’s not a ringing endorsement for the state of film discourse online.
Thor: The Dark World – 67 Percent
At ComicBook we focus on superhero content, so we know that Marvel fans will generally identify Thor: The Dark World as the weakest Thor movie and perhaps even the worst movie in the MCU. Keeping that in mind, the movie’s 67 percent fresh score is at least a little surprising. It may not be a critical darling, but it’s high enough to make one question the general negativity in the comments about this movie among fans.
It’s even more surprising when you note that this is not the lowest score for an MCU movie on Rotten Tomatoes. The ones lower than this are Thor: Love and Thunder at 63 percent, The Marvels at 62 percent, Eternals at 47 percent and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania at 46 percent. There are some interesting implications here — those low score are all from more recent movies in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga, when the idea of “superhero fatigue” really started to hit the discourse. It will be interesting to see if any of these movies are redeemed in years to come, and why.
Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker – 51 Percent
Once again, the score for the end of the Skywalker Saga simply seems too generous. A whopping 522 trusted critics submitted their reviews for this aggregate, and some of them must have been contrarians for it to be this high. The average rating is 6.1 out of 10, and at least we can say the movie is certified rotten. Hopefully it’s low enough that Disney is planning to do things very differently when the Star Wars franchise starts moving forward in the timeline once again.
Step Brothers – 54 Percent
Comedies don’t seem to do well on RT, as even the beloved 2008 blockbuster Step Brothers couldn’t be certified fresh. The movie has an average rating of 5.6 out of 10 among 203 critics, and a surprising number of them have come in gradually in recent years.
Sharknado – 77 Percent
Finally, there’s nothing more shocking on Rotten Tomatoes and the scores for movies that were made ironically. The infamous Sharknado is certified fresh with 77 percent positive scores in reviews from 22 trusted critics. They haven’t praised the movie blindly, as it has an average of 6.4 out of 10. However, it’s even more surprising when looking at RT’s “top critics” — The movie is actually 100 percent fresh there with an average rating of 9 out of 10 among 8 critics.
As always, fans must make up their own minds about every movie, from award show bait to made-for-cable disaster films. At the same time, reviews can be a very interesting — especially for discussions that come after seeing a film rather than as advertisements ahead of time. You can share your own thoughts on platforms like Rotten Tomatoes to keep the conversation going.
