"It's not about the movies"

For years, I have been relying on the tried and true (but, ultimately boring) “Four Star”
rating system.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  This industry standard has served the movie going public for decades.  As my faithful readers know, through the years I have toyed with this system in futile attempts to breathe some new life into it.  Except for a brief period of time where I reversed the designations and made 1 star the highest rating and 4 stars the lowest and ultimately confused everyone, including myself, I have remained true to the classic format.  But never being one to rest on tradition, I have decided to introduce my own new and improved rating system.

It struck me that the most well known rating system in use today, Ebert and Roper’s “Thumbs Up” is woefully inadequate for accurately measuring the true value of a film.  More than ever, it seems like they have to add superlatives to their thumb gesture.  So, what used to be “Two Thumbs Up” has become “Two Thumbs Way Up” or “Two Enthusiastic Thumbs Up” or “Two Enthusiastic Thumbs Way Up.”  Are you getting the picture?  The system has a lot of built in limitations.  It also occurred to me that no matter how much they like a particular movie they never go beyond 2 thumbs.  Why is this?  Between the two of them, don’t they possess a total of 4 thumbs?  Why can’t a movie have 3 thumbs up or, if it is a really exceptional production, like “Bio-Dome”, 4 thumbs up? What is stopping these guys from exercising the full potential of their collective thumbs?

Since someone once told me that I was “all thumbs” when it came to mechanical things, I decided to put all of my digits to good use in creating my rating system.  The movies I review from now on will be rated from 1 to 10 thumbs with 10 being the highest, most super duper rating of them all (the next Pauley Shore movie, for instance). 

~