# City of God is 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.. really?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/city-of-god-is-92-on-rotten-tomatoes-really/509023>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 6, 2009, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/city-of-god-is-92-on-rotten-tomatoes-really/509023 "2009-09-06T01:50:58Z")\
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**Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/city-of-god-is-92-on-rotten-tomatoes-really/509023/21 "2009-09-07T14:16:46Z")

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Well, it’s worth remembering that the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating is simply the percentage of critics who liked the movie, not an average of those critics’ scores. A passably entertaining movie can easily get high scores if it doesn’t have any glaring flaws that cause critics to dislike it. In theory, a movie could get 100% on RT if all its critics individually rate it as 6/10 because a 60% review would still be considered “positive” in the Tomatometer’s eyes.

On the other hand, if you look at the movie’s “[Average Rating](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/help_desk/faq.php#avgrating)” instead of its Tomatometer score, it only got a [8.2/10](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/city_of_god/).

Essentially, this means that 92% of critics liked the movie overall, but their average score meant they thought it was merely good, not great.

Competing site Metacritic uses an average score system as well. [City of God got a 79% there](http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/cityofgod?q=city%20of%20god).

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