The Gimcrack Miscellany

Beratings Cometh

Posted on 11. Jul, 2007 by The Gimcracker in Beratings, Movies

Don’t you hate it when that list of 10 movies you’ve been dying to see suddenly escapes your memory as soon as you enter Blockbuster? I’ve decided to start rating the movies I’ve seen, not because I think anyone actually cares what my opinion is, but because I find myself frequently forgetting what they were and if they were good.

I’m going to use a new rating system developed solely by me and my love/hate relationship with Hollywood. It’s called the Berating system, and it’s based on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being the most berated movie I’ve ever seen and 0 being a film that I’m not able to berate for the life of me. A movie is great if I can’t berate it:

be·rate [bi-reyt] – verb, to scold; rebuke: He berated them in public.

Yes, I realize my system utilizes an 11-point grading scale since it starts at 0 instead of 1, but that just means it’s 1 better than yours. And yes, I realize my system is based out of negativity, but like I said I love Hollywood for giving us movies but sometimes I hate them for it as well, especially if the movie is as dumb as Tomb Raider or A Knight’s Tale.

Basically, movies get 1 berating for violating each category of really dumb things (2 if the category is really violated in an extremely sick, stupid, dumb way). The five main categories in order of importance are:

• Bad acting
• Bad plot/story
• Inconsistencies in the story
• Unbelievable events
• Bad schematics (directing, editing, cinematography, sound, etc.)

So, if a movie morbidly violates all 5 categories it will get a 10/10 Berating, whereas if a movie violates none of the categories it will get a 0/10 Berating. Note that if one side character who’s barely in the movie is a bad actor, I’m not going to Berate the movie 1 point. Also note that by “unbelievable events” I’m not talking about the animals being able to talk (like in Homeward Bound or Bug’s Life) or wizards being able to fly (like in Harry Potter) as long as that’s what the movie is selling. I’m referring instead to events that go against the grain of what’s possible even in an imaginary world, such as if Superman were to catch Lois Lane right before she hits the ground and save her life (we all know that both hitting a person’s body, especially the “man of steel”, and hitting pavement at 200 MPH will kill you either way.)

Ok, that’s enough explanation since I said myself that no one really cares about my opinion. On with the Beratings!