Rotten Movies You Love

[m3tan]

I thought it would be fun to share the lowest ranked movies on Rotten Tomatoes that you love. I would imagine for most of us it will be a list of guilty pleasures with the occasional controversial film or hidden gem...

My Rotten Top 10
1. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - Definitely inferior to the original despite huge box office. But rotten? No way.
2 .Enemy at the Gates - I'm a huge WWII buff and starved for a good film about the Eastern Front (where the war was really won/lost), so I guess I'm more forgiving of the silly four quadrant love story that was forced into this one.
3. 50 First Dates - I'm not a fan of romcoms but I guess I found the Groundhog Day style theme endearing.
4. Brother - Aniki!!!!!
5. The Girl Next Door - A blatant rip-off of Risky Business but still worked because Elisha Cuthbert was really hot.
6. Any Given Sunday - Typical Oliver Stone hyperbole but as a football fanatic I found it utterly fascinating.
7. Along Came Polly - The shirts/skins basketball scene made me laugh so hard it hurt...
8. American Pop - Ralph Bakshi animated musical chronicling the history of American popular music. Again a genre I have much interest in so my rating is probably generous.
9. Beverly Hills Ninja - Pure guilty pleasure. Chris Farley as a ninja is just hilarious to me...
10. The Day the Earth Stood Still - The only universally panned Keanu Reeves film I liked for whatever reason - maybe because of Jennifer Connolly...

To generate your list, view the profile for rttntomatoes and sort "Your Films in Common" list in descending order by the last column (Diff). You'll need to weed out any Rotten Tomatoes movie tier 4 or higher.

[ShogunRua]

RT is a stupid site and I wish metarankings site would go away in general. Far too many people substitute meaningless metarankings for having an actual, well thought-out opinion.

2 .Enemy at the Gates - I'm a huge WWII buff and starved for a good film about the Eastern Front (where the war was really won/lost), so I guess I'm more forgiving of the silly four quadrant love story that was forced into this one.

From what I have heard, this movie has an incredible degree of realism, far moreso than 95% of Hollywood war films. I'm definitely interested in watching it.

4. Brother - Aniki!!!!!

Which one? There are a lot of movies with that title.

9. Beverly Hills Ninja - Pure guilty pleasure. Chris Farley as a ninja is just hilarious to me...

This is not a bad movie at all. It's not good either, but it's a decent action comedy that doesn't take anything seriously.

[m3tan]

RT is a stupid site and I wish metarankings site would go away in general. Far too many people substitute meaningless metarankings for having an actual, well thought-out opinion.

I won't go so far as to say they should go away, as they have a useful purpose, but many people misinterpret them. A movie that has a 100% RT isn't necessarily great. A perfect example is the film Witches. It's an entertaining family film but obviously not in the same league as the Godfather. Many times a movie that is very effective at being mundane will score much higher than a slightly flawed film that aspires for greatness. I actually find in general that Dreamworks and Pixar films fall into this category. I mean Up and Toy Story 3 are very good but I could never put them in the category of truly great films.

4. Brother - Aniki!!!!!

Which one? There are a lot of movies with that title.[/quote]

Takeshi Kitano, Beat Takeshi, Omar Epps.

[m3tan]

2 .Enemy at the Gates - I'm a huge WWII buff and starved for a good film about the Eastern Front (where the war was really won/lost), so I guess I'm more forgiving of the silly four quadrant love story that was forced into this one.

From what I have heard, this movie has an incredible degree of realism, far moreso than 95% of Hollywood war films. I'm definitely interested in watching it.

It's on a very short list of mainstream Hollywood war movies made this century that are watchable. By basis of comparison, it crushes Saving Private Ryan on the realism factor. The opening Omaha Beach scene was excellent, but the rest of Saving Private Ryan was laughably bad. But don't get me started on how Hollywood has completely rewritten history. I suspect 99/100 people, I mean Americans, don't realize that more British and Canadian troops participated and died during D-Day than Americans. According to Hollywood, you'd think they weren't even there... I mean according to Jonathan Mostow (U-571 director), it was the Americans who captured the u-boat (actually it was the British SAS) and cracked the Enigma code (actually it was the Polish)...

[lisa-]

i don't think RT is useless, as i'm very unlikely to like a rotten film that much. doesn't mean i'll automatically like the super acclaimed ones though. in fact RT doesn't tell me what films to see, but rather which ones not to see.

there are some exceptions though, mostly with directors who i'm already interested in:

33% gummo (harmony korine)
33% epidemic (lars von trier)
40% only god forgives (nicolas winding refn)
47% sweet movie (dusan makavejev)
48% antichrist (lars von trier)
52% i'm still here (casey affleck)
55% dreams (akira kurosawa)
57% dodes'ka-den (akira kurosawa)
57% tout va bien (jean-luc godard)

i believe that's all of the nearly 200 films i consider great that are rotten.

[JSchlansky]

Here are a few I found quickly
Without a Paddle is at 14% but I really love that movie for some reason.
The Punisher Warzone I thought was actually quite good, that's at a 27% The Thomas Jane Punisher is rotten too with 29% but I honestly liked warzone better.
I thought Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon was great and that only has 20%
The Master of Disguise has a horrible 1% but I'm really nostalgic about that movie.
Mallrats is rotten with 55% but that's another great comedy from Kevin Smith

I don't really trust Rotten Tomatoes as an accurate judge of a film's quality. I don't see an aggregate percentage as a good way to evaluate a film.

[m3tan]

i don't think RT is useless, as i'm very unlikely to like a rotten film that much. doesn't mean i'll automatically like the super acclaimed ones though. in fact RT doesn't tell me what films to see, but rather which ones not to see.

I think this applies to any site that aggregates ratings if you have discriminating taste. A low RT score almost always means I dislike it, whereas a high score means I "might" like it. I'd say the same exact thing about Yelp and restaurants...

[ShogunRua]

RT is a stupid site and I wish metarankings site would go away in general. Far too many people substitute meaningless metarankings for having an actual, well thought-out opinion.

I won't go so far as to say they should go away, as they have a useful purpose, but many people misinterpret them. A movie that has a 100% RT isn't necessarily great. A perfect example is the film Witches. It's an entertaining family film but obviously not in the same league as the Godfather. Many times a movie that is very effective at being mundane will score much higher than a slightly flawed film that aspires for greatness. I actually find in general that Dreamworks and Pixar films fall into this category. I mean Up and Toy Story 3 are very good but I could never put them in the category of truly great films.

That's part of it, yes. Another part of it is that metarankings sites are a meaningless measure in general, a stupid number determined by worthless shills. And yet, even people that know better use it in place of their own opinion.

Takeshi Kitano, Beat Takeshi, Omar Epps.

I've seen it, too. Good movie! I gave it a 71, T8, with the following review;

"Great brutal violence with Takeshi Kitano being a badass as usual. The conclusion is sobering and consistent with the story. The only downside is the majority of the black gang, especially Omar Epps, are either boring or flat-out annoying caricatures. Overall though, a good film."

It's on a very short list of mainstream Hollywood war movies made this century that are watchable. By basis of comparison, it crushes Saving Private Ryan on the realism factor. The opening Omaha Beach scene was excellent, but the rest of Saving Private Ryan was laughably bad. But don't get me started on how Hollywood has completely rewritten history. I suspect 99/100 people, I mean Americans, don't realize that more British and Canadian troops participated and died during D-Day than Americans. According to Hollywood, you'd think they weren't even there... I mean according to Jonathan Mostow (U-571 director), it was the Americans who captured the u-boat (actually it was the British SAS) and cracked the Enigma code (actually it was the Polish)...

Well, as a Russian, I also find it laughable that both Americans and Brits think they were the most significant part of the war with Germany.

In reality, 85% of the Nazi troops, 85% of the Nazi tanks, and 76% of the Nazi planes were stationed on the Eastern front. Moreoever, the 15% that was fighting in Africa, Normandy, etc. against British and US forces were usually Nazis that were frequently very old (45+), very young (less than 18), or had already been significantly wounded.

A low RT score almost always means I dislike it, whereas a high score means I "might" like it. I'd say the same exact thing about Yelp and restaurants...

I think Yelp is marginally more useful, though. Firstly, Yelp is determined by (mostly) actual people, not idiot critical shills. Secondly, and more importantly, Yelp reviews can be easily read and compared against one another.

If I just paid attention to Yelp scores for restaurants (the equivalent of using only RT scores), I wouldn't get much out of it. Many outstanding restaurants have a 3.5 star average, and the worst place I have ever been at, which I felt compelled to write a 1 star review of (my only Yelp review of a restaurant) was 3.5 stars, too.

However, if I notice that the bad reviews all complain about the same thing, and that happens to be service and wait time, I know that those aspects will likely suck. If there are exceedingly few bad reviews (and most of them are 2 or even 3 stars), with no commonality to them, then the restaurant is probably good. (Although there are exceptions to this, too!)

Thirdly, I will trust aggregate rankings about the food and service at a restaurant long, long before I will trust such rankings about art!

[Anomaly]

All of them, OP.

[CMonster]

I have really big soft spots in my heart for Beverly Hills Ninja, 50 First Dates, Along Came Polly, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. I saw them all right about when they came out and then again years later, and I still enjoyed all of them even if I know they aren't the highest of quality.