The Passion of the Christ is the largest divergence I can find on Rotten Tomatoes.Are there ones with more extreme differences?
Still in theaters today, BATMAN V SUPERMAN has a lower score (27%) and has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars more than POTC.
(At that, it looks like a couple of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels got low scores while grossing roughly a billion apiece.)
The Michael Bay Transformers movies are an easy pick here.
Coming at the question another way, consider THE DEVIL INSIDE: it has a pathetic 6% on Rotten Tomatoes – in return-on-investment terms, it grossed over a hundred million on a million-dollar budget after debuting at #1.
The Passion of the Christ was good for what it was.
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was not, has 19% on RT, and made over $800 million.
Staying Alive made the eighth highest amount of money for the domestic box office in 1983 but got 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The first example that comes to mind for me is “Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo” and its sequels, of which there was one that I know of.
While its critical reputation has vastly improved over the years, Stanley Kubrick’s the Shining initially received scathingly bad reviews, enough that the film actually didn’t do so well financially at first. But a word-of-mouth audience made it into a sizeable hit over the summer of 1980.
Infamous pornographic film Deep Throat got a zero rating by Ebert and went on to be one of the highest grossing (no pun intended) adjusted for inflation (no pun intended) films of all time. Although it has been suggested the gross (still no pun intended) was reported as much higher than reality as part of an organised crime money laundering operation.
TCMF-2L
Lifetime Achievement Award: Adam Sandler
Lifetime Gross Total (32): $2,660,971,312
Average: $83,155,354
Average Rotten Tomatoes score: 29%
Sandler HAS figured something out, hasn’t he?
A sustainable business model that has him producing modestly budgeted (comparatively) comedies with a reliable cast that use international gross to make a very good return.
The simple fact is that now that the movie-going public is internationalize almost any film can make a decent profit if it opens in enough countries. Quality notwithstanding, there are enough fans of effects and explosions to make such movies work.
Well I was beaten to it on the Micheal Bay and Adam Sandler flicks front.
I’d like to add most flicks by M. Night Shyamalan.
Tons of sequelled franchises like “Porky’s” should also qualify.
For what it’s worth, it’s nearly impossible to say much about what either the critical or the box office reception of Deep Throat was. The Wikipedia article about it says that the film was controlled by the Mafia. The filmmakers claimed that it made $600 million at the box office. Other estimates are that it made more like $100 million. It probably got very few reviews. The only ones quoted by the article are Ebert’s and one by Al Goldstein. There were quite a few pornographic films before that time that cost very little to make and made quite a lot relative to the amount spent, but nobody reviewed them or even acknowledged their existence:
Kinda sorta coming full circle: at 15%, GOD’S NOT DEAD got a much lower score on Rotten Tomatoes than POTC did – but it’s grossed more than 30x its budget.
Remember that this was a film that played in some theaters for years. There was one Time Square theater that showed Deep Throat and The Devil In Miss Jones pretty much 24/7 for years. According to the documentary Inside Deep Throat, a Mafia guy literally stood in the theater lobby with a counter and a bag, and would collect their share from the theater box office in cash at the end of his shift based on the counter.
As for reviews, 100% on Screw’s “Peter Meter” is nothing to sneeze at.
Yeah, there were plenty of magazines that reviewed *Deep Throat * and other pornographic films…
Adam Sandler’s movies haven’t been quite as successful as you might think. Look at the list I link to at the bottom from Box Office Mojo. Eliminate the films that he did just a cameo or a voice in. Eliminate the ones that made less than $100 million. That leaves just the following movies and box office totals:
Grown Ups 2 $133,668,525
Just Go With It $103,028,109
Grown Ups $162,001,186
Bedtime Stories $110,101,975
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan $100,018,837
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry $120,059,556
Click $137,355,633
The Longest Yard $158,119,460
50 First Dates $120,908,074
Anger Management $135,645,823
Mr. Deeds $126,293,452
Big Daddy $163,479,795
The Waterboy $161,491,646
These were all released between 1998 and 2011. $100 million is a very good total for a comedy, but it’s not equivalent to the real blockbusters. The real story with Sandler is that for about 14 years he was able to make comedies that made very good money for a comedy. Before and after that time (and sometimes in the middle of that period) his movies made decent money but nothing great. One movie was a real disaster at the box office:
Men, Women & Children $705,908
So it’s not like Sandler has been able over his entire career to make much more money than you would expect given the critical response to his films:
You are missing the point. Most people wonder why he is allowed to make so many mediocre to terrible movies at all. Other actors don’t get that many chances but that is the real point - he isn’t a typical actor aiming for cinematic greatness. Instead, he stumbled on a reliable formula for making somewhat modestly budgeted movies that are almost guaranteed a set return.
Unlike many producers, directors and actors he fully understands that the studios are a business first and foremost and they really want people like him that can produce consistent profits which he does. Most of his movies are just a rework of a limited number of previous storylines that have already been proven to work.
He gets to take his friends on vacation for a few months, maybe make out with Drew Barrymore again and incidentally shoot a movie for fun while they are there. Everybody wins! It sounds simple but he is one of the only people in Hollywood today that is allowed to operate like that because he consistently brings home the bacon with low risk.
“Pink Flamingos” also got a zero stars rating from Roger Ebert (“How do you rate a movie like this?”) and was a huge midnight movie draw in the early 1970s.
I have seen “Pink Flamingos”; I haven’t seen “Deep Throat”. I did see the documentary, “Inside Deep Throat” which is available on Netflix. Yes, it’s rated NC-17; so is “Pink Flamingos”.
As for the popularity of Adam Sandler, it’s because we have a perpetual crop of adolescent boys IMHO.
Anyone have stats on “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”?
Oh criminey, yes, he does.
I loved Red Letter Media’s scathing review of Jack and Jill outlining the shenanigans behind that film.