20 Movies That Critics Were Wrong About

Somewhere between finding showtimes in the back pages of the local newspaper and the inception of Letterboxd, our trusted source of what to watch in theaters came from Rotten Tomatoes. The review aggregation website, which has its own Facebook-like origin story from the minds of three University of California, Berkeley students in the 1990s, started as a place where people could “get access to reviews from a variety of different critics.” The composite of these reviews took the form of the Rotten Tomatoes score, a percentage out of 100 that would become both revered and feared in Hollywood. Keeping to the tomato motif, any film with a score greater than 60 percent on the Tomatometer is considered “fresh,” while those failing to hit that threshold get slapped with the “rotten” label. 

In 2019, the website restructured a similar function for moviegoers with the Audience Score, allowing verified watchers to rank movies on a five-star scale and establish a second percentage score for films. While the Audience Score offered a different perspective for the masses, it also highlighted a common disparity in Hollywood: the critics and the general public don’t always see eye-to-eye. 

All of which is to say, we saw the best movies of our generation destroyed by a Rotten Tomatoes score. In fact, here are just a few that Twitter users think critics were certifiably wrong about… 

Scooby-Doo (2002)

Speed Racer (2008)

Underworld (2003)

Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Mallrats (1995)

Hook (1991)

Hot Rod (2007)

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)

Uptown Girls (2003)

She’s the Man (2006)

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Jumanji (1995)

I, Robot (2004)

Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019)

Now and Then (1995)

Man of Steel (2013)

Hotel Transylvania (2012)

National Treasure (2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)

Twilight