Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Oddities of IMDB

Every now and again, you get a movie at IMDB that seems like it should be good but the rating is rather low on the first few hundred votes--often the movie won't

I have a theory that this is from wacky experiments in test screening. They take a movie, say, Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day and then show it to a group of--people who will show up to a test screening, like an eight grader's slumber party, or local frat house. Lacking giant robots and boobs, they'll naturally rate it low.

As time passes and the movie's actual demographic goes to see it the rating will jump tremendously.

This seems to happen mostly with smaller films.

I'm going to test this theory tonight by seeing Mrs. Pettigrew, which went from a tepid 7.0 to a slightly less tepid 7.4 over the weekend. Still too few votes to get a bead on the mass IMDB opinion horde, and it could just be so-so.

4 comments:

  1. Giant robots and boobs are a must for every movie except Westerns, which have giant horses and boobs.
    Or monsters and boobs. Or serial slasher killers and boobs. Now a movie can have a lot of boobs, but they will be covered and talking about "relationships." That is your chick flick, best avoided at all costs. Unless you have been having trouble sleeping. I am been very wound up with the tax season, but my wife put on Lifetime, I went out like a light in 2 minutes.
    Ambien, I spit on Ambien. (I spit on Elliott Spitzer but that's another story and he might like that anyway).

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  2. Yeah, it must get increasingly crazy until the date itself, eh?

    Or does it even stay crazy after tax-day as people come in trying to see what they can do to keep the IRS from breaking their legs.

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  3. I agree with you 100%
    It's like first commenters are the one who do it professionally and they like "i saw all movies of the world, and this one didn't quite surprise me" and when later on when movie hit domestic viewers it will usually split on haters and lovers, because who else will leave a comment if movie was "ok" +/-
    so you get zeros and maxes of their votes.
    where is also a spammers that should nail down all other movies except of their own, and also others, who hate all foreign movies, but whats another story

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  4. Very true, Dry Gin.

    It's indicative of social sites in general.

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