Only Two of 2024’s Top Ten Movies Have Negative Rotten Tomatoes Scores

As 2024 draws to a close, the biggest movies of the year at the domestic box office are coming into focus. Unless late December 2024 titles like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 or Better Man utterly shatter expectations, Inside Out 2 will remain 2024’s biggest movie by a slim margin. Just behind it is fellow summer 2024 Disney tentpole Deadpool & Wolverine, while the likes of Wicked and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice endure as other titles from the year that cracked $290+ million in North America. While some doubt the ongoing viability of movie theaters, these movies reinforce the ongoing health of theatrical experiences.

Interestingly, most of these domestically lucrative features from 2024 have garnered mostly positive reviews from review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean each title has scored unanimous euphoric responses from both critics and audiences. Generally, though, good vibes have emanated from the reputations of 2024’s biggest movies, except for two releases. Two of 2024’s ten largest movies in North America have rotten ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, though each made so much money that nobody behind the scenes is complaining.

A Despicable Critical Reception

When comedies underwhelm, they’re really hard to sit through. Jokes falling flat don’t take on new levels of hilarity like, say, a poorly conceived dramatic performance or action sequence gone awry. If a comedy movie isn’t tickling your funny bone, there’s not much else the film can offer to make the experience more pleasant. Currently, Despicable Me 4 is the third-biggest movie of 2024 domestically. It’s also the most successful movie of the year in North America with a rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Only 56% of critics gave it a passing mark.

Nobody could’ve been surprised by that outcome. Since Despicable Me 2, the Despicable Me saga has largely garnered unenthusiastic shrugs from critics. Minions and Despicable Me 3 both received Rotten Tomatoes scores in the same territory as Despicable Me 4. Minions: The Rise of Gru went back into fresh territory with a 70% rating, but even those reviews weren’t glowing with praise. The super broad tendencies of Illumination movies that allow them to flourish with audiences across the globe, regardless of language or culture, also tend to ensure they don’t have enough distinctive personality to garner strong reviews.

Criticisms of Despicable Me 4 largely stemmed around gags that were too derivative of past installments as well as slipshod execution of sentimental moments within such a silly narrative. The feature’s animation style, which showed no real evolution or flourishes from prior Despicable Me adventures, was also routinely criticized. Still, a little over half of Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics did give it something resembling a positive score while audiences awarded Despicable Me 4 an A CinemaScore grade. Best of all for its financiers, Despicable Me 4 made over $360 million in North America alone plus $950 million worldwide.

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As an extra form of consolation, it’s not the only mega-grossing 2024 movie to score the dreaded rotten moniker from Rotten Tomatoes.

A Monstrous Blockbuster With Weak Reviews

2024’s ninth biggest movie domestically is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which took in a whopping $196.3 million in North America, the second-highest domestic haul for the MonsterVerse saga after Godzilla’s $200.67 million cume from May 2024. Nearly doubling what Godzilla vs. Kong grossed in theaters in March 2021, The New Empire was a resounding smash hit and even scored the second-ever A-level CinemaScore grade (an A-) from audiences for a MonsterVerse title.

Despite these achievements, The New Empire left something to be desired in its critical reception. It currently has the second-worst Rotten Tomatoes rating for a MonsterVerse movie, only ahead of 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Chief among critiques for this Adam Wingard directorial effort was the persistently lazy writing for the human characters and the lack of tangible gravity to the monster fight scenes. Many critics observed that entire cities or realms could be destroyed in The New Empire without consequence, removing the dramatic stakes underlining Kaiju classical like Shin Godzilla or Godzilla Minus One. Speaking of that lizard, an understated role for Godzilla also drew rebukes from many viewers.

For many audience members, for better and for worse, such quibbles were immaterial. Audiences shelling out money to see The New Empire in IMAX got what they wanted more or less in that gigantic monsters fought, locations crumbled, and the movie didn’t last too long in its run time. The New Empire even threw in another beastie, Mothra, who was absent from the pre-release marketing. Combine that with the enduring appeal of monsters like Godzilla and Kong and it’s no wonder The New Empire was a box office smash.

Though internet conspirators will continue to claim critics are some malevolent force with infinite power, Despicable Me 4 and The New Empire paint a more nuanced picture of these individuals in the cultural conversation. Critics are just people too whose opinions sometimes align and sometimes don’t with the general public’s reception of a given movie. When it comes to the year’s ten biggest movies, critics and audiences were generally in sync, except for two blockbusters with minions and monsters to spare.