Some battles are as old as time itself. Light vs dark. Cats vs dogs. Critics vs fans.
Ben Moore was so intrigued by this last standoff that he turned his considerable data analysis skills to charting the most overrated (loved by critics, rejected by the massses) and underrated (you get the idea) films of all time.
To carry out his investigation, Moore turned to the critical aggregator Rotten Tomatoes - the disputed king of cumulative review scores. Building a sample of films (around 2,600), Moore grabbed the data for the critics' scores and public scores. The most overrated and underrated were thus easily identifiable after plugging the data into the following graph (click to enlarge):
On the whole, both sides agree on the majority of films. The results for the most underrated were as follows:
If you were wondering what Facing the Giants was about (we were), it's an Evangelical Christian film that centres around an American football team. Critics also appear to dislike lowbrow comedies (Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Grandma’s boy) and felt equally betrayed as we did over the handling of the Bad Boys sequel.
The most overrated were as follows:
In short, the public don't seem to warm to kid's films (or Hugh Grant) as much as the critics do.
To see the complete results of Moore's amazing research, check out the following detailed graph. We're off to write an aggressive comment on the Facebook fan page of Bad Boys II.
(Images: Benjamin Moore; Rex)
