We've all seen it. There is a movie that you're not quite sure about or maybe one that you're convinced is a train wreck. Then the second weekend commercials come out. They try to convince you to come in and see it by showing you all the highlights. This is when they usually hit you with the one or two word rave "reviews". Rolling Stone says it's "hilarious". Chicago Sun Times finds it to be "thought provoking". Random blog person found it to be "charming". And as usual, Clive Barker says it's the scariest movie he's seen in the last five minutes.
I'm not saying these are outright lies, but they're taking a review and truncating it to a single word. Even if the review is only two words long, it's still a 50% cut in content. I know for a 30 second TV spot you can't really do much more than flash a single word every five seconds and tickle the movie-goer's G-spot and hope it's enough to draw them to the theater. This tactic just allows for a lot of abuse and manipulation. Just to prove my point I'm going to hype some movies using excerpts from real reviews. One of these is actually from a positive review of a movie. Let's see what happens.
Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever
TV Guide calls it "Genuine"
"You'll be pleased" says The Boston Globe
"Perfect" - LA Times
Master of Disguise
"Phenomenal" - View London
Battlefield Earth
Variety says it's "Inspired" and "Destined for greatness"
Good Luck Chuck
"Hilarious" - Empire Magazine
Catwoman
The Bangor Daily News says it's "Genuinely clever"
Speed 2: Cruise Control
The Washington Post finds it to be "Entertaining" with "Hair-raising excitement"
All but one of those movies got single digit reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning less than 10% of the people who saw the movie found it to be anywhere close to entertaining.
The poor bastards who have to market terrible movies have a tough time. It's their job to make you believe that 100 million dollar suckathon (not the good kind) is worth your money. In most cases just trust your instincts. If it looks bad then skip it and read a damn book for a change. If you can't decide just let me know and I'll tell you if you're an idiot for thinking about seeing shit.
