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[bryant]

About Cheaper by the Dozen: Roger Ebert is wrong, and pretty clearly wasn’t paying close attention to the movie anyhow, since he has a couple of factual errors in his review. So, no, it’s not a three star movie. 1.5 stars, maybe. Not funny, not charming, kind of depressing. Me, I like my cheerful uplifting Christmas movies to be about success rather than failure.

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Every time I bother to read Roger Ebert, I notice factual errors in his reviews. And this has been going on for a decade at least. Drives me nuts, and makes me wonder why the hell someone isn't fact-checking him, and/or why there hasn't been a public outcry for him to get his stories straight.

[bryant]

Ah, then it's not just me. Usually I don't care /so/ much, but this time he appears to have simply read the press kit or something.

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

Bryant, you want to use http://www.rottentomatoes.com. Roger Ebert liked it, but so many other people didn't I knew to stay well away.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I vote FOR Rotten Tomatoes.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

I vote against, since this is apparently a democracy. metacritic.com does the exact same thing, but includes more critics (as I know from personal experience), is better organized (the blurb/links are given in order from highest rating to lowest, instead of just splattered all over the page) and provides more information (they judge each review and give it a numerical rating, instead of going with rottentomatoes' good/bad dichotomy). Also, they cover more media.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as movies are concerned, RT seems to get a fair amount of critics, and the good/bad dichotomy evens out over that quantity. I'm not sure how having the blurbs in order makes any difference.

The wide variety of media they cover is a big win, though.

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Mostly, attaching a numeric rating to a review and then presenting them in order makes it easier to pick out a strongly positive review or a strongly negative one, or to deliberately locate one that's just about balanced. Rottentomatoes' thumbs-up/thumbs-down philosophy kind of makes every review into a crap shoot. Just because they type a review as negative, for instance, doesn't mean there's no praise whatsoever in the film. I like metacritic because I can see where all the reviewers fell along the scale from good to bad, and the orderly presentation just makes it simpler to find things.

[totient]

Of all the reviewers out there, Roger Ebert provides the strongest, most consistent correlation with how much I'll actually enjoy a movie.

Of course, it's a negative correlation, but it's not the polarity that makes a correlation useful.

[thebitterguy]

Okay, so what kinda factual errors did he put in his review?

[bryant]

1) Hillary Duff does not have a romantic adventures subplot. Tom Welling's character kind of does, in that he has to leave his girlfriend when the family moves to Chicago, but it's hard to call it a subplot as opposed to a plot element.

2) Bonnie Hunt's book is not "submitted, accepted, edited, printed, in the stores and on the best-seller lists within a week." It's submitted and accepted fairly quickly, but there's a big chunk of time between acceptance and printing.