The fullhyd.com movie rating and reviewing policy

[fullhyd.com]

fullhyd.com's editorial ratings are aimed at helping the majority of our users identify films with a high entertainment value.



Our ratings are thus primarily mass/entertainment-value oriented, and our editors follow that policy - to rate films from an entertainment perspective rather than a critical perspective. fullhyd.com's movie reviewers are people with a keen interest in and knowledge of movies.



This is just the fullhyd.com way of reviewing. We realize that sometimes some well-made films and critically-acclaimed films may not receive high ratings by this method, but in those cases, we mention that clearly in the review, so that the crowds that might enjoy these films, even if they are likely to be a minority, know.



The most logical parameter to validate our ratings against, we feel, should therefore be the eventual box-office performance of the film in Hyderabad. We believe we are amongst the most accurate that way.



(Box-office correlations are relative to language - i. e., different for English, Hindi and Telugu films. So a 3-star rating for a Telugu film might mean a projection of 100 days, while that for a Hindi film might mean 6 weeks and that for an English film might be 3 weeks.)

[Last Prime]

Folks,

I've been reading reviews on fullhyd for years and enjoying them very often.



But the thing with ratings, is it a new policy? Coz I see it doesn't quite apply to many of the older reviews. I am not one of those annoying guys pointing at specifics, but I definitely wish there is consistency in u'r ratings. Very often, I tell my friends a movie is watchable if u guys give 2.5 or more. 3 and up is often excellent. Of course, exceptions.



As an aside, I think the reviews used to be much more enjoyable and informing in the past than now. I started to feel over the last year or so that the reivews seem to focus more on the writing than on the message (see what I mean: there used to be fun wrapped into the reviews, but now the reviews seem wrapped around the fun - not nice).



fullhyd rocks nevertheless and I visit the website everyday (I did that over the last 4-5 years - Baba was the first review I read I guess).

[fullhyd.com]

Folks,
I've been reading reviews on fullhyd for years and enjoying them very often.

But the thing with ratings, is it a new policy? Coz I see it doesn't quite apply to many of the older reviews. I am not one of those annoying guys pointing at specifics, but I definitely wish there is consistency in u'r ratings. Very often, I tell my friends a movie is watchable if u guys give 2.5 or more. 3 and up is often excellent. Of course, exceptions.

As an aside, I think the reviews used to be much more enjoyable and informing in the past than now. I started to feel over the last year or so that the reivews seem to focus more on the writing than on the message (see what I mean: there used to be fun wrapped into the reviews, but now the reviews seem wrapped around the fun - not nice).

fullhyd rocks nevertheless and I visit the website everyday (I did that over the last 4-5 years - Baba was the first review I read I guess).

Hi Last Prime,



Thank you for the kind words. Several of our users had written to us over the years wrote to us that we were sometimes more high-brow/snooty in our reviews than looking at things from the normal movie-goer's perspective - the "masses" as they referred them to be - so we have evolved over the last couple of years to match that.



In general we feel the reviews are more user-friendly now, and the ratings are much more highly correlated to the film's eventual BO performance, which means we are right in suggesting to the majority of Hyderabad's movie-goers if they will like a film.



Thank you for the comments, again.

[fullhyd.com]

Well…thank you Mr. Editor for your response. You spoke about your site being an ‘Entertainment guide’ and you do not try to be film critics the way I described. But I would like to defend my argument on the following grounds.<br /> <br /> 1) You repeatedly spoke about the correlation between your Day 1’s ratings and the money the movie has grossed etc.,. But you missed a point here. Some movies are going to be Box-office hits though the people, in your words, are not actually ‘entertained’. For example, 10 out of 10 people who saw Om Shanthi Om said it’s a hopeless product and they were actually bored watching it. But does that mean people stopped watching this movie? No. why? Because, people go to watch movies which have the star power/famous directors/branded producers irrespective of whether they like it or not. When a film stars Sharukh Khan, people say “well, I watched that, that’s a bad movie”. But in case of a film that casts a lesser known star or a debutant and equally bad as the big movie, they say “ well, I heard it’s bad, I am not going to watch it.” If you notice the difference between the two statements, the former indicates that the guy has already watched it and paid money for it and the latter points out that the guy doesn’t like to go to the movie; thus effectively contributing to its reduced viewer-ship. Hence, your empirical profession that Om Shanthi Om has grossed 94 crores and you gave a rating of 3.5, does not actually reflect the number of people who actually watched the movie and felt bad about it. Does it? I am pretty sure it does not. Though a vast number of people are dissatisfied with the movie, the big movies continue to be a hit because the number of people who say ‘I am going to try this, no matter what” are vastly more compared to the low-profile movies. Therefore, since the statistics can only reflect the number of people, who have come to watch the movie and the money they paid for it, the empirical result would always be positive and more importantly, your rating 4 or 3 or 2.5 for the movie is false because, in reality, people were not ENTERTAINED at all by the movie; hence, the sequence goes like this, I go to a movie ‘coz you gave 3.5 and because I fully trust you as an ‘Entertainment Guide’ but I simply walk out bored, cursing your rating. How’z that? And the list you gave in your note has six such big movies out of ten and they would have been box-office hits whether you gave them a 2 star or 5 star(precisely for this reason, inferior actors like Sharukh Khan or Chiranjeevi continue to be mega stars for ever or it takes a really really really long time to slow them down). My point is that, your ratings as far as the movies which have a star actor/star director concerned cannot be relied upon as an effective entertainment pointers and the thing you said, about the correlation between your rating and the number of days/weeks the film is likely to screen in town, is also false, simply because theatres are going to play the movie as long the I-am-going-to-try-this-movie kind of people come to watch it though they wouldn’t like the movie. <br /> <br /> 2) Secondly, I am not really sure you guys are not full-fledged film critics but you are only a bunch of guys who points your readers in the right direction about the ‘titillating/scintillating’ elements of a movie alone. I have been doing my little research about your ratings(though it may not be empirically as sound as yours) and it looks suspicious. I have divided the movies I mentioned below into three categories and you can notice the vast discrepancy between your rating and how well the movies have done at BO.<br /> <br /> a)The movies which were rated low by your site but done extremely well at Box office:<br /> <br /> Amma Nanna O Tamila Ammayi - 2 (Huge hit but a terrible film)<br /> Page 3 - 1(a big hit. Not bad)<br /> Fanaa - 1(done extremely well. Haven’t watched this)<br /> Allari - 1.5 (Hit. Ravi Babu got the sobriguet “Allari Ravi Babu with this movie. A very poorly made movie.) <br /> Chandramukhi - 1.5 ( Mega hit. An absurd flick)<br /> Style - 1.5 (Hit. A shitty movie)<br /> 7G Brindavan Colony - 1.5(Huge Hit. Typical fake movie)<br /> <br /> b) The movies which were rated pretty high by you but busted at Box Office:<br /> <br /> Fight Club - 3(Most people didn’t know it played)<br /> Jhoom Barabar Jhoom - 3 ( people ran away from the theatre)<br /> Ek Lavya - 3.5 (would you believe it?)<br /> Danger(telugu) - 3.5(utter flop/crap) - <br /> Aaja Nachle - 2.5<br /> Ek Ajnabee - 2.5<br /> Kabul express - 2.5<br /> <br /> c) The movies which were rated pretty high by you, but also critically acclaimed,<br /> (but for a site which gives ratings based purely on entertaining factors these movies were rated on par with or better than huge commercial hits, how come?) :<br /> <br /> Being Cyrus - 3.5 ( it was rated on par with Om Shanthi Om but didn’t do as well at B.O. A good movie though)<br /> 15 Park Avenue - 3.5 <br /> Agni Varsha - 3.5 (A what?)<br /> Maqbool - 4 ( a mega rating but it was a flop commercially)<br /> Bose-the forgotten Hero - 4 (when did it arrive in town? Did it?)<br /> Maine Gandhi ko Nahin Mara- 3.5 ( Maine low rating kyon nahi diya?)<br /> <br /> The category (c) is critical for once it indicates that you guys sub-consciously try to be film critics though you say your site is primarily an entertainment guide and ratings for the movies mentioned in categories (a) and (b) too points out that your rating for commercial films often misfired. <br /> <br /> The bottom line is that I really admire you guys (arguably, yours is the best movie-reviewing site in the country). You have such a strong team of movie reviewers that you don’t have to be proud of wrong achievements( …..100% correlation between your ratings and revenues…reliable entertainment guide…blah, blah, blah). Rather, you can simply say “we are the best movie reviewing site in the country ‘coz we know how to judge a movie and it’s human to go wrong once in a while.” That takes care of it. Doesn’t it? Moreover, what exactly you guys aim at?; to be the best entertainment guide in the town? or to be the best movie reviewing site in the country?. Because, to be the latter, your ratings need not correlate with the revenues a movie has grossed and you needn’t hit the mark always to remain popular. How?….I regularly read the reviews written by James Berardinelli (reelviews.net) or Roger E’bert(rogerebert.suntimes.com) and these guys write a review virtually for every movie Hollywood manufactures and they, not on few occasions, trash the movies that are mega-hits; but both these guys are immensely popular !!! and I never seen these guys consciously trying to hit the mark or pretending to be the best “Entertainment Guides’. People read their reviews simply because their reviews are HONEST. No more no less. If you can gain name, money and still remain honest, what more you can ask for?(in fact, here, the commodity you market is your ‘honesty’). For me, that’s the best option to take, practically or otherwise. But trying to be the ‘entertainment guide’, sacrificing your popularity to please the ‘common man’ may be the second best option ( perhaps a perverted ideal). Why should you go for the second-best when the best is begging to be taken? What say? <br /> <br />

Hi Diehard-5,



Thank you for the comments on the Taare Zameen Par review. Here are some points:



1. 10 out of 10 people do not feel Om Shanti Om is bad . We know people in our own office and circles who liked it. And SRK has given many flops.



2. A big star is part of the entertainment. And c'mon, Chiranjeevi is a brilliant actor - being a mass hero takes nothing away from that. If you haven't, you should try watching him in any K Vishwanath films, or in films like Rudra Veena.



3. We changed our rating policy over the last 3 years (as you can infer from some posts above), so some examples from before might not be validate what we say today. Also, we did say we are right 80%-90% of the times. We do go wrong - we have just said we go wrong fewer times than others, and almost never with films that actually go on to become hits. Also, the stats we gave in the Taare Zameen Pe review were for 2007, when we have done the best (by our parameters) so far.



4. We do rate differently movies that are clearly not made for the commercial market. This is highly subjective, and rare, and we mention it in the review - e. g. No Smoking.



5. Why would catering to the majority's tastes not be honesty? What is an honest opinion about a movie, anyway? If you meant something like a high degree of depth in writing, well, that is not always our criterion, even if it might be a legitimate one. Like we said, we use entertainment for the majority of locals over a weekend as the criterion - people have dozens of problems in their heads, do these 2 hours help them forget them. To us, honesty merely means using common pre-defined criteria for all movies.



And it is perhaps far more difficult to create a commercial success - in movies or in any market - than to be creative or artistic. Of 150 films each churned out by Bollywood and Tollywood each year, 5-10 are commercial hits. Commercial success can't be simply sneered at.