ROTTEN TOMATOES

'Rotten Tomatoes' is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of movies and video games. The name derives from the vaudeville-era cliché of throwing tomatoes and other products at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad.

Contents

Description

Print

External links

Description

Rotten Tomatoes staff search the Internet for as many websites as possible that contain reviews of particular films and games; from the amateur to the professional. The staff then determine for each review whether it is positive ("fresh," marked by a small icon of a red tomato) or negative ("rotten," marked by a small icon of a green splatted tomato).
The website keeps track of all of the reviews counted (which can approach 250 for major, recently released films) and the percentage of positive reviews is tabulated. If the positive reviews make up 60% or more, the film is considered "fresh" in that a supermajority of the reviewers approve of the film. Conversely, if the positive reviews are less than 60%, then the film is considered "rotten." In addition, major film reviewers like Roger Ebert, Desson Thomson/Stephen Hunter (Washington Post), and Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), are listed in a sub-listing called "Cream of the Crop," which tabulates their reviews separately, while still including their opinions in the general rating. When there are sufficient reviews to form a conclusion, a consensus statement is posted which is intended to articulate the general reasons for the opinion. The ratings favors recent releases and films with large numbers of reviews over older films, due to the scarcity of archived reviews for such older films. Rotten Tomatoes members are also able to comment on individual critic's opinions, as well as rate the films themselves.
This rating in turn is marked with an equivalent icon when the film is listed, giving the reader a one glance look at the general critical opinion about the work. Films that are considered "fresh" have many reviews to base the "freshness" on and have an excellent average rating (at least 60%) receive the "Certified fresh" label as well as the red tomato. Films with just 55-60% can have the certificate if there are many reviews and an excellent average (indicating that even "rotten" reviews were fairly supportive). There are films with 100% which don't have the certificate due to a rating average that is "good" but not "excellent" or because there are not enough reviews to be sure of the freshness.
As of March 2007, the best reviewed film on the site is ''Toy Story 2'', having an average rating of 8.6 and receiving 107 reviews, all of which are positive, making ''Toy Story 2'' 100% Fresh. There are a few other films that received 100% freshness rating, but received fewer reviews, and conversely, there are over 200 films that have so far received a 0% freshness rating. The site has recently included a list of the "100 Worst Reviewed Films of All time." The top movie on that list is .
In 2004, the website IGN Entertainment acquired Rottentomatoes.com. In September 2005, IGN was bought out by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The site is one of the most heavily trafficked on the Internet, with an Alexa Internet ranking of 660 (as of 24 July 2006) and between 60–120 million page views per day.
The forums of Rotten Tomatoes are a thriving community with thousands taking part in discussions of such topics as movies, video games, and music.

Print

At least one major newspaper, the ''Toronto Star'', regularly publishes the ratings in its weekly entertainment section.

External links

★ Official website

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★ RottenTomatoes forums

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★ List of approved RottenTomatoes Critics

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