Tonight on on Fuse TV they showed the excruciatingly stupid movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. The info banner from my digital cable rated this piece of amphibian shit 3 out of 4 stars.:eek:
I don’t know who makes those ratings up, but I’ve observed 2 things:
They are usually very accurate when set for recent movies (10 years old and newer)
They are inaccurate (too high) for movies older than 10 years.
Why? Is it nostalgia? Who’s nostalgic for bad films?
In the past few months I’ve observed other turds like *Meatballs 2 *and Howard the Duck get 3 stars when they should have burned the master copies and executed the directors. I specifically remember HTD getting 1.5 stars when it was on a couple of years ago.
I’ve also observed that older movies that were good also got higher ratings, getting 3.5 or 4 stars when they only deserved 3.
Like I said, the ratings for recent movies are pretty accurate. Why the padding for older flicks?
I haven’t noticed any tendency for movies to be rated higher than they deserve if they are older. I think this is just a matter of your rating of certain movies as less than other people do. There is a clear case where, in fact, newer movies are rated higher than they are rated later. Watch the ratings in the IMDb’s list of 250 highest-rated films. Quite consistently, a film starts out rated rather highly if it is a hit when it’s first released. Over a period of ten years or so (and, yes, I’ve been observing the ratings in IMDb for that long), the film slowly drops in ratings in nearly every case.
I’ve noticed the same thing. Usually, it’s just a half-star or one full star. But I’ve seen it in movies like Overboard and Funny Farm, which both went up a half-star. And Caddyshack went up a full star, I think.
The movie ratings in TV listing are not done by movie critics, or even people familiar with the films. They are put in by whoever types up the listings.
Thus, newer films are more likely to reflect critical consensus since it’s more likely the person typing in the rating has seen them. Older films, they’re just guessing, and if a title is familiar (Howard the Duck, for instance), they may give them more stars because they’ve heard of the film (though not the critics). They probably don’t have the time to look anything up, so they just type whatever comes to mind.
Something like Maltin, which involves actually seeing the films or at least knowing their critical reputation won’t show this effect.
And, the people inclined to rate these films are fans of the films. Those who dislike the movie or are indifferent to it do not bother entering a rating for an old film. Self-selection bias rules.
Not so. Another example is Three Amigos. That was on with a rating of 2 stars and about 6 months later it was on again with a rating of 3 stars. It went up a full star in less than a year. I specifically remember this example as Three Amigos remains the only movie I ever walked out of a theater on because t was so bad. Whenever I’m surfing and I see a movie like this I always check the info banner to see what it’s rated at. Then I get stunned by the absurd result.:smack:
Simply put, influential critics retire or die and are replaced by younger critics with different tastes. Also, some movies inexplicably get put into heavy rotation on cable and find a new and appreciative audience.
And movies don’t always go up in critical estimation; at least as many see their stock drop. Remember when Breaking Away was considered a permanent fixture in the firmament of great movies? or Being There? After Hours? All those John Hughes teen comedies? Warren Beatty efforts like Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait? I see most of these on the $5 rack at Safeway.
Why does a 2nd rate POS singer with medocre reviews like Elvis become so highly rated? When he died, he suddenly became much more popular. Was it because his old performances changed? No, it was the sentiment of the fans.
Same thing happens to old movies. The nostalgia overcomes the original quality.
I think you can make a case that movies that have stood the test of time and continue to appeal to audiences that weren’t even alive when they were made deserve a higher grade. I’d say it takes about 25-30 years for a film to become a classic. This gives time for a new generation to assess its quality.
That’s what I was thinking. You just don’t necessarily know at the time how good a movie actually is - what its influence will be, or whether it will stay fresh or become dated. Some examples have already been mentioned.
“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” actually was a very good movie. At the time it was widely assumed to be a stupid kid flick, and so was dismissed as such by many critics. But watching it now, it’s held up shockingly well; every time I pass by it on cable I watchj a bit of it and every time it’s better than I remember it being. It’s a well written, well paced, and good natured movie with a lot of good gags.
Three Amigos was on here in New York (Time Warner Cable, I think WLNY, Channel 55) just last week and was listed with two stars (I specifically remember this because Three Amigos is awesome and I couldn’t believe they gave it two stars). Perhaps what you’re noticing isn’t a case of old movies having their ratings bumped, but rather simply variable ratings in general. Then you develop a theory about it and confirmation bias takes care of the rest.
I’d the the goal of these stations is to get people to watch what they are broadcasting. Y’know nielsen ratings, ad revenue, etc.
If more people are going to tune in and watch a *** movie instead of a *1/2 based only on it’s star rating then they may as well rate all the movies they show as *** or higher.
It’s kind of destructive to advertise “Howard The Duck, one-star, watch for the hell of it… please.”
Or even, “We bought the rights to this movie in the bargain bin at Broadcast-R-Us. However, since we want to make a profit on the exchange, we’re going to claim it’s a 3-star movie so we can charge the advertisers more. If we rated this thing truthfully then our advertisers would realize how horribly we’re gouging them.”
That’s got to be some good weed they’re selling you up there!
HTD was a hopeless mess of a movie. Just awful. I was really pissed too because I used to read the comic books back in the 70’s and had been looking forward to the movie.
I even ripped off my signature from Howard the Duck comics.
