Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is cinematic quality. Whereas some moviegoers can sit through 100 screenings of Showgirls or Road House and find something new to love about it each time, others would prefer to be subjected to two hours of extensive oral surgery. Which means that describing any movie as “good” or “bad” is an assessment that’s open to interpretation and, of course, argument. Which is all part of the fun, really.
While the determination of a movie’s value is an assessment best left up to the individual being forced to sit through said film, there are thousands of individuals—and websites—that have appointed themselves the arbiters of worthwhile media. One of the most popular among them, of course, is Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator that classifies its database of movies, most of which have been reviewed by both critics and users, in one of two ways: Fresh (a.k.a. Good) and Rotten (a.k.a. Bad).
But the truth is that movies are much more deeply layered, and deserve to be analyzed in far deeper a manner than a single number can offer. Yet the Tomatometer is out there, for all the world to see, even if it doesn’t always get it right. (Which, of course, is yet another opinion.) Here are 20 so-called “Rotten” movies that are worth a second look (if not a recount).
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