Q: How is RottenTomatoes.com like a box of chocolates? And is "Crash" the worst Oscar winner of our time?

A: One of T.A.M.S.Y.'s longtime favoritest Web resources is film-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, an absolute must-visit for the discerning/poor moviegoer. I base most bucks dropped at the cineplex on R.T.'s advice, and rarely has the TomatoMeter let me down (the memorable exception being Monster's Ball, which 85% of the nation's critics saw drunk).

So T.A.M.S.Y. is shocked and dismayed and and horrified and aroused to report we've uncovered a scandal amidst RT's vines — a ghost in the machine that's certain to ROCK THE FILM INDUSTRY TO ITS VERY CORE.

Either that, or it's a tiny computer glitch that no one except me will care about. Hard to predict, really. Either way: T.A.M.S.Y. EXCLUSIVE!!!


POINT BEING: Bedridden with Oscar fever, I was surfing through Rotten Tomatoes' extensive coverage of past winners. Specifically on my mind was whether Crash, last year's debaclish Best Picture winner, was the worst-rated film (75%) of the modern era to take that honor¹.

Well, turns out that Crash is only the second-lowest-rated film since the 60s. Forrest Gump (74%) just barely edges it out.

...OR DOES IT!?! The Answer May etc., etc.

I was sort of surprised to see Gump rated so low — not necessarily because it was great, but because it was overrated. It may not have deserved to beat Shawshank or Pulp Fiction, but it was pretty well received, and a way less surprising choice than Crash. I decided to check if something might be skewing the numbers. Small sample size? Poorly summarized reviews? Anti-Hanks fervor?

It turned out to be way simpler than that: The numbers are being skewed by... the numbers. The TomatoMeter for Gump cites 31 "Fresh" reviews and 11 "Rotten." In reality, there are only eight Rottens. Count 'em yourself. That pushes Gump up to a 81%, which seems just about right.

SCANDAL!!!²

Of course, it's possible that the TomatoMeter is wrong on other films too. It's possible that everything you know is wrong; that up is down and left is right and diagonal is diagonal in the opposite direction; that it's a Jewish conspiracy, or an anti-Jewish conspiracy, or a conspiracy by self-loathing Jews. It's possible that Freddy Got Fingered is the greatest work of art in the history of humankind, and no one even knows it.

But I'll leave all that to someone else to figure out, because this post is already so very long.

EXTRA CREDIT: Find other weird math glitches on Rotten Tomatoes! Figure out what is causing the errors! Create accompanying charts and amusing PhotoShop collages! Post them in the comments! Wake me up when you're finished!

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¹ By the way, I'm defining "the modern era" as having started when Midnight Cowboy took home Best Picture of 1969. Midnight Cowboy is weird on its own, but what makes it a particularly odd choice for the Oscar is that the 60s' Best Picture picks were dominated by musicals (like My Fair Lady and Oliver! and The Sound of Music and the toe-tappin' Lawrence! of Arabia!).

The 70s, conversely, were dominated by the grit of the Godfathers and Deer Hunter and Cuckoo's Nest and that sort of thing. Hollywood's output is usually a few years behind the zeitgeist, but it seems like it took them extra long to notice that America had lost its innocence in November, 1963³.

Originally, I was looking for the worst ever, but it didn't seem fair to include Oscar-winners like The Greatest Show on Earth (38%) and Cimarron (36%), because the sample size on RT is too small for films that old.

² The SCANDAL would be more SCANDALOUS if Fox, which owns RT, had anything to do with these films. But it doesn't: Gump was financed by Paramount, and Crash by Lions Gate.

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³ J.F.K., blown away, what else do I have to say?