10 Movies Critics Loved But Audiences Hated (According To Rotten Tomatoes)

Art is subjective. Mostly. And at times, critics can get harped on for being too harsh on certain movies. But what about audiences? With the use of one of the more popular and well-known sites that rate films, Rotten Tomatoes, that question can have some answers.

The exact percentage isn’t always accurate or reflective or how highly/lowly the films were actually individual rated, but gives a decent gauge of a comfortable median. Here’s a list of some of the more notably drastic differences in scores between critics and audiences, in which the critics were actually kinder.

10 Spy Kids (Critics: 93% Audience: 46%)

Poor Robert Rodriguez. The man deserves a break. Perhaps audiences found it too cringe-inducing and embarrassing. The audience reviewers for the film on Rotten Tomatoes are also probably much older than the intended target audience for the film, and just weren’t feeling it.

In a movie with “Fooglies,” booger jokes, and big celebrities in cheesy roles, it’s not completely crazy to imagine people disliking the film, but again: the audience is in the title. Things don’t get better in terms of ratings (from either side) for the Spy Kids sequels.

9 The Witch (Critics: 90% Audience: 53%)

Robert Eggers is one of the most promising up-and-coming modern horror directors. His atmospheric style and very deeply dug in metaphors make for fascinating stories. The Witch is a pensive, slow-paced horror film with more reliance on suspense than on scares. Perhaps audiences found it dull due to its slow pace, and likewise, the message of what it was trying to say (about womanhood) might have gone over their heads. Thankfully, Eggers’ latest film, The Lighthouse, got a much warmer response by the audience; perhaps because of its deeply bizarre comedic tendencies.

8 Hail, Caesar! (Critics: 86% Audience: 44%)

The Coen Brothers’ filmography is generally popular with both critics and audiences, making them some of the most universally acclaimed directors in cinema. To be fair, Hail, Caesar! does meander with its plot frequently, and can feel disjointed and random at times, including a musical number with Channing Tatum.

Likewise, the plot is (purposefully) very convoluted, and the movie’s first watch can hurt the presentation when one is trying to keep up with the plot details. It’s not dissimilar to The Big Lebowski in that sense. But to say the movie is bad is to drop it to a new level.

7 It Comes At Night (Critics: 87% Audience: 44%)

Again, audiences can get antsy if a horror film seemingly does little to nothing during its runtime. Despite only having an hour and a half runtime, this film does take its time. And considering that It Comes At Night came out just a few months after the universally loved horror film (and modern classic) Get Out, that factor might have set audiences’ expectations at a very high level for their horror films. To add to that, It Comes At Night is simply a depressing and draining movie, dealing with grief and death…but it’s a horror movie, so it won’t exactly be rainbows and puppies.

6 Antz (Critics: 93% Audience: 52%)

Whenever a Dreamworks movie is made, audiences will usually get good material out of it one way or another. Antz, the answer to Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, stars Woody Allen as a neurotic ant. Woody Allen’s personal life aside, his filmography is usually pretty liked.

On top of that, though his character’s personality is essentially just Woody, the rest of the film isn’t a traditional Woody Allen film. In fact, it gives A Bug’s Life a serious run for its money. Maybe audiences have a bias towards Pixar, but regardless, Antz got thrashed by them.

5 Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Critics: 78% Audience: 54%)

This is a perplexing entry. Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is a pretty mediocre entry in a great franchise. The Cold War setting and yes, even the aliens are a great new change of pace, but the execution is abysmally boring. Shia LeBeouf is a great talent, but he’s not great in blockbusters, this movie being a prime example. The movie is about as tiring as the aged Harrison Ford appears to be in every scene, and plot contrivances aside, the film just isn’t fun so much as forced. The critics are the ones that should explain themselves here, not the audience.

4 Noah (Critics: 76% Audience: 41%)

Once again, it’s hard to gauge what the critics saw in this film. In fact, it’s much harder to gauge. Presumably, some of the audience scores are low because they don’t like to see their religious views get twists and turns. But on top of that, the audiences probably just don’t want to endure a bad movie. Noah is just another bad “serious” modern Biblical epic that makes the Bible seem incredibly boring, or even more boring for people who already thought it was. It’s especially bizarre that critics liked this more, as the movie was white-washed, excruciatingly pretentious, and confusing, things that critics generally don’t applaud.

3 King Kong (2005) (Critics: 84% Audience: 50%)

Peter Jackson’s love letter to the 1933 classic can get a bit overzealous and overstuffed at times. For fans of the original, this is not a problem whatsoever. But for people who have to endure a 3-hour movie (3.5 for the Extended Version), their tailbones don’t care that Peter Jackson snuck in a cute reference to a quote from the original. It also takes a while to get going, as the titular character doesn’t even appear on the action-filled Skull Island for nearly an hour. From there, it becomes a CGI spectacle with dinosaurs and creatures galore. The film has a lot of heart and passion, but it can understandably alienate the average movie-goer with its need to give everything detail.

2 Ad Astra (Critics: 84% Audience: 40%)

In perhaps the most surprising (and recent) entry on this list, Ad Astra was apparently pretty terrible for a lot of audience members. Though pensive space movies dealing with existentialism might not be everyone’s cup of tea, Ad Astra had a lot of crazy things going for it. Modified killer space baboons, moon pirates, and asteroid belt surfing, to name a few. On top of that, the thesis of toxic masculinity serves as a great moral that keeps the story cohesive, with an incredible and subdued performance from Brad Pitt. Alas, this feels like a vendetta for critics not liking Interstellar as much as audiences did.

1 Sausage Party (Critics: 83% Audience: 50%)

Never say that critics don’t have a sense of low brow humor. Sausage Party is a strangely poignant movie that reflects on atheism and the idea of a god or the universe and what it’s like to be an individual with no control or answers to those concepts. The people flocked to it; Sausage Party became the highest-grossing R-rated animated movie of all time at the time of its release. And seemingly, the audiences were perfectly split on what to think of it. Maybe the ridiculously uncomfortable/hilarious scene at the end was the determining factor, as it’s one of the last scenes in the film.

About The Author

Rafael Sarmiento
(90 Articles Published)

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I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and am Spanish/Venezuelan-American. I graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in History, and in Film. I write for both ScreenRant and CBR, along with other projects on Medium, so feel free to stalk me. I love to read discussion, even when it’s totally awful, so leave comments all over my articles, folks.

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