[Movie] Do online reviews affect how you enjoy movies?

So let's say you see this pretty bad-ass trailer and tell yourself "Oh wow, that's a pretty bad-ass trailer! I'm gonna watch that movie!" But since you're not sure if the movie is worth your money, you check the internet for reviews.

Let's say Critic #1 from very popular movie review site says "The movie sucked. Don't watch it.", and the movie's average rating is around 30%. And since you trust this website very much, and you think movie critics are the best people in the world, you didn't bother watching the movie and tell your friends how bad the movie is.

Months pass and you happen to see the trailer again! You remember how bad-ass you thought it was and you get really curious, just like little boys do on their 10th birthdays. So you pickup the dee-vee-dee and finally got to watch it. At this point you remember that the reviews say it's a pretty bad movie, so you tell yourself "I'll just lower my expectations because it's probably crap".

But then after watching it you realize how perfectly made the movie was and that critics are total dicks whose main goal is to give the lowest rating to every movie! They lied to you and broke your trust, making you wait a few more months before being able to watch this really good movie!

And due to the dissapointment of being lied to, you rant on the internet.

tl;dr do you believe in online reviews?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Nope.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Holy crap zerg out of nowhere! Do you think movie reviews are helping people to choose the right movies to watch? Or are they confusing people's desire and curiosity with their selfish opinions?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I think they neither help people choose the right movies to watch, nor do they project what they want to what other people want. Well, perhaps some of the more egoistic do, but you cannot lump all reviews into the same category.

The rationale for my thinking is, people are not sheep, and reviewers are not God. Reviews do not factor in my decision to watch anything. In fact, I typically watch the movie / TV show episode or read the comic book first. After forming my own thoughts, I then head over to the reviews and see how my opinion stack up against the reviewers'.

Thus, I use them more as a validation of my opinion, than as a heuristic on whether I should do something or not.

For example! I make sure I finish reading up on comics that interest me, before heading to IGN to see what the reviewers say. Ditto with the latest episodes of Young Justice, ThunderCats, and CSI - the only shows I follow nowadays.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I use movie reviews the same way that I use game reviews. I'll skim over a bunch of them and look for common complaints or praise rather than trusting any one opinion. Even then it doesn't factor into my decision to see a movie very much since I've adored movies in the past that got unanimously terrible scores.

I was speaking idiomatically.

If I'm interested in a film and see that it's getting wall to wall jeers, I'll read a few to see what stands out as sticking points, then read between the lines to figure if this persons trash is another man's pot o' gold. It's a pretty rare occurance, I find, most movies the past couple years have been soooo bad. Like, most of them. I find it more common that I write off movies based off the ads and get interested from critic praise after release.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I read them only after seeing a movie. To see which reviewer got what aspect wrong about the plot or acting or whatever. It's very entertaining, and more often than not the reviews are completely off-base.

So, the decision whether I go and see a movie is something different. Usually I go check out new movies by familiar directors whose works I've enjoyed in the past. Also a trustworthy friend whose opinion I value making a good recommendation for a movie is also one incentive to see something. There's not that many people like that, though. There was also one finnish movie journalist who was quite often spot-on in his reviews, but he doesn't seem to be writing anymore.

I also read Roger Ebert Inverted and see movies he doesn't like.

FELIPE NO

Netflix has a real nice members reviews list that doesn't have your staple critics like all over the net and on the more positive note, these member reviews will be rated either helpful, not helpful or inappropriate. I use these member reviews OFTEN despite of however average rating the movie gets.

I also noted that these ratings on Netflix I get are tailored to get me to watch them, so I am aware. I've rated just about over 2k worth of movies so they used my scale of rated genres to show which ones are suggested for me and the like. And for the record, I rate movies just to keep track of what I've seen.

So yeah, before I queue up a possible shitastic movie, I read the most recent member review and check the others below it (they'd show up to five I think before going any further on another page) and see how many found it was helpful or not.

I'm generally pretty forgiving towards movies so most often than enough, bad reviews from critics isn't gonna stop me from checking it out.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Critics are not something people should cite. A perfect example is Roger Ebert. I love the guy as a writer but as a critic, no.

On one hand, he's the only critic who loved The Phantom. I'm with him on that. I think its the best comic book movie ever made. He also dismissed video games as art, which is something else I agree with him on.

On the other hand, he also dimissed Blade Runner (which he's since changed his tune on), Brazil, Fear & Loathing In Los Vegas and a couple other movies which are genre classics.

The only critic that matters is your own shitty taste.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The only online review that I watch is Peter Ralis on Youtube. I think that his online reviews are a bit informative but I also remember that I don't know him and that he probably has different taste in movies then I do.

So I take what they say into consideration but I remember that whatever he says is based on his own personal taste.

There's nowhere I can't reach.