That's Rotten

I like the idea behind the website Rotten Tomatoes, I routinely go there to check up on movies, set how they fared. I've never quite understood though why people use their "tomato-meter" as some sort of gospel. Just because Iron Man has a 93% Fresh rating, doesn't mean it's actually a better movie than something with a 73% Fresh rating, ya know?

Anyway, I was there today checking up on The Strangers and thought I'd see how some recent Aussie flicks fared. I came upon Bra Boys, an Aussie documentary that was released last year down here and recently on the US arthouse market. I saw this New York Post comment with a "fresh" tag attached. For whatever reason I chose this review to read.


Would you then be surprised to learn that this so-called "fresh" review was actually very rotten. The writer, Kyle Smith, actually only gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4! He goes on to write "Most of the film consists of death-defying surf footage, which for nonsurfers gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly." Doesn't seem very fresh to me, yet somehow he's being credited as doing so.

There's also this review just opposite Smith's.


Do you know what score this Tom Keogh guy gives the film? 1.5 stars out of 4! Apparently Keogh's 1.5/4 is so dramatically different to Smith's identical score that they get opposing fresh/rotten ratings.

Something doesn't quite add up.