Which credible media portal you refer for movie reviews in India? No, not talking about IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes yet, just mainstream print and online media in India. Do we have any clarity and confidence how they rate the new releases in Bollywood and regional cinema.
You see, if you don't have a satisfactory answer, then that right there is the biggest struggle for an average cinema goer- Lack of a credible rating source for movies in our country.
Have a look at vis-a-vis comparison across sources like Times Of India, India Today, FirstPost, NDTV and IMDB (too few user reviews for new releases). For this purpose, I am taking here movies within last year only. Two each of- Friday fresh releases, brilliant, and better left alone blunders.
Thackeray
ToI: 3.0/5, IT: 1.0/5, FP: 2.00/5, ndtv: 1.5/5, imdb: --- /10
Manikarnika
ToI: 2.5/5, IT: 3.0/5, FP: 1.75/5, ndtv: 1.0/5, imdb: --- /10
Race 3
ToI: 2.0/5, IT: 5.0/5, FP: 1.75/5, ndtv: 1.5/5, imdb: 2.1/10
Thugs Of Hindustan
ToI: 2.5/5, IT: 1.5/5, FP: 2.00/5, ndtv: 2.5/5, imdb: 3.8/10
Badhaai Ho
ToI: 4.0/5, IT: 2.5/5, FP: 3.50/5, ndtv: 3.5/5, imdb: 8.1/10
Stree
ToI: 3.0/5, IT: 2.5/5, FP: 3.50/5, ndtv: 3.5/5, imdb: 7.9/10
Some interesting behaviors if you can draw from this limited info:
ToI is almost always generous with its ratings for a big budget release. The most untrustworthy of the lot perhaps.
India Today gave frickkking 5 star to Race 3, while being miserly to some outstanding movies of last year. And these are the two largest media houses :(
FirstPost and NDTV are keeping it sensible overall.
And over a period of time, IMDB reflects the overall reception of a movie in general.
Now a days, even nearly all the award shows acknowledge both the type of response. An instant Critical response, and a long term popular verdict by common audience. While we don't necessarily have a system to guide our movie choices in India, western films enjoy (or suffer) many credible online portals to assist a movie goer. CinemaScore, Metacritic, Rotten Tomato and IMDB are some of the popular ones.
If you want to go with Critics' ratings, Rotten Tomato is your savior. It collects reviews from acceptable film critics, members of writing guilds and journalists. These critics upload their reviews (sometime north of 300 for major releases) and mark it a 'fresh' or 'rotten' release. The percentage of these Fresh or Rotten reviews make its rating. 70%-100% score will be Certified Fresh. Below 60% it's considered a rotten movie.
While critics provide an instant review, audience sometime reject a movie on release but comes back around to appreciate it over a longer period of time. The best example is Shawshank Redemption, which failed on box office then, but later dethroned Godfather as the best rated movie of all time. These responses from registered users largely form a rating (on a scale of 1-10) on International Movie Database (IMDB). That's why it's also considered one of the most credible source of reviews on planet, provided there are a sufficient number of reviews submitted. It also employs a weighted average calculation formula for choosing the Best 250 movies of all time, and also Bottom 100 movies ever.
While I wish we have some sensible system around here too, it seems unlikely for a foreseeable future though. Given the financial influence of production houses, movie stars and their 'corporate patrons' controlling (or owning) the media houses today, exploring a movie's review online isn't an easy task anymore.
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