The promise and peril of movie ratings

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves."-- "Julius Caesar" (Act 1, Scene 2)

Pace Cassius, sometimes the fault seems very much in the stars. I speak of the movie critics' bane: the star rating that sits atop each film review in this newspaper and that functions as a neon-green directional signal diverting the reader away from thought.

It's not an exact science, those stars. I gave "Mystic River" three, but maybe that was low; in my heart of hearts it felt like three and a quarter and perhaps I should have graded on the curve. That no-star rating for "Gigli" back in August? Too easy, I agree; I mistook the total absence of pleasure for the presence of the actively toxic.

Every reviewer I know hates the fiendish things, for the same reasons readers, editors, and publicists like them. Star ratings boil down critical analysis -- the careful weighing of pro and con, the appreciation for the nuances of camerawork and performance, the baited hook of scorn -- into a snap judgment that can be instantly grokked by a harried parent or slapped across a two-page ad spread. Gripe though critics may, unless we're one of the dainty pashas at The New York Times or The New Yorker, the stars -- or some system of dingbats like them -- are a fact of the workplace, like spam or carpal tunnel.

Here at the Globe we use a system of no stars through four, in increments of half-stars, depending on whether a movie is slow death with overpriced popcorn, average twaddle, or "The Godfather." Some newspapers use five stars. The San Francisco Chronicle has a cartoon of a little man -- called, inventively, "the little man" -- who reacts in five stages of enthusiasm, including comatose, bemused, and erupting out of his seat in hyperactive movie-geek rapture. I'd suggest something similar to represent the Boston moviegoing public in the pages of the Globe, but I'm afraid our little man would just sit there, dour as a parson, even if he were happy.

There are other ways to go. Ebert and Roeper (formerly Siskel and Ebert) have their famous thumbs, waggling in phases from down to "way, way, way up!" Clearly, they need to consider other digits. Before I arrived at the Globe, I spent many years working at a national entertainment magazine that you may have come across in the fancier airports and dentists' offices. We used grades -- nay, we pioneered the use of grades. (Oh, all right, the magazine's founding editor stole the idea from "People.") The nicest aspect of this approach is that it puts the whole exercise back in school, where it belongs.

Iconic ratings are a utility, in other words -- a pure service play. Just as a poor grade alerts parents that their child is dogging it in math class -- no matter the cause -- so one or two stars advertises a movie's failure. Whether that's a failure of nerve ("The Human Stain"), of skill ("Party Monster"), or of concept ("Beyond Borders") isn't important unless you read the review -- and who wants to read a lousy review? Who in this coddling media culture wants to willingly hear the bad news?

That's the genius of the star ratings: They spare readers the pain of negativity, be it subjective or deserved. They're like a doctor who says, "This is going to hurt," and then points out the available exits. They're there so you don't have to read the review.

There are several problems with this, and I'm not counting journalistic ego. One is that every movie contains both good and bad elements -- except for "The Cat in the Hat" -- and that star ratings are strictly monaural, fussy in their insistence that a movie is all terrific, all dreadful, purely so-so. Another, larger problem is that equal ratings are, in fact, not alike: Three stars for a grind-house horror movie is very different from three stars for the latest upmarket Miramax Oscar grab. (The former should be read as a surprised recommendation; the latter as a warning.) This is called context, and with any luck it's in the body of the review.

A third stumbling block is that most movies are, by definition, average. Always have been. The sole reason people look back fondly on the Hollywood studio era is that they've forgotten about all the junk that was cranked out like sausage links -- for every "Philadelphia Story" there were 10 varieties of "The Gorgeous Hussy." Historical dross falls away (unless you subscribe to Turner Classic Movies, in which case you can watch it at 5 a.m.) but "average" still means two stars in the newspaper, and by some odd alchemy that translates into a "must-avoid" for many readers. Perhaps "must-avoid-until-video" would be closer to the mark.

Perhaps it's worth laying out one reviewer's contorted rationale for the assigning of stars. Again, this is not a science. I try to judge all movies roughly against what they're trying to achieve rather than holding them to a cinematic gold standard -- if it's a teen dice-and-slice flick, is it the very best teen dice-and-slice flick it could be? That said, films that address the human condition or show evidence of actual wit start out at a higher level than those that simply feature the latest in exploding spleens.

Four stars doesn't mean I think the movie's perfect, only that it's close enough for practical purposes. "Lost in Translation," "Spellbound," "American Splendor" -- these are movies that set their bars high and end up going higher.

Three and a half stars, in my head, is often a left-handed compliment: An ambitious film with one or two flaws that keep it from true greatness. "Cold Mountain" is a good example, as is "Seabiscuit."

Three stars, by contrast, can mean high praise when I assign them to genre movies that offer solid, unpretentious entertainment value: "Runaway Jury," "Freaky Friday," "Under the Tuscan Sun." Applied to Important Statements, three stars means the movie just doesn't seem that important: "Thirteen" struck me as a lot of brilliantly acted noise signifying nothing.

Two and a half stars? A big film with serious problems, like "The Missing," or cookie-cutter fare with one or two elements that tug the movie toward enjoyability, such as "Love Actually," with its deep roster of British character actors. Two stars? Cookie-cutter fare without those elements, "The Haunted Mansion" being a fine example of a film that is professionally made yet has no earthly reason to exist. If the actors or genre appeal to you, two stars might still count as a recommendation, at least when the DVD comes out.

Once we get below that level, all bets are off. One and a half stars merely means a movie has won its battle against badness. One star means it has lost that battle. A half star means it lost the battle and was a terrible idea to start with. No stars: Melt the prints into guitar picks.

But that's only how I do things. My co-reviewer, Wesley Morris, doubtless has a different sliding scale and I can't speak for writers at other publications. In the end, quantifying a critic's subjective response is like putting a stocking on an anvil, and websites such as Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) and Metacritic (www.metacritic.com) that tally the nation's reviewers and come up with one overarching dingbat are simply Babel at its most lunatic. If you see a rating and skip the review, fine -- life is short. But you still might miss a performance that could change your life. At the very least, you might miss the best bad movie you'll ever see. Far more than the disservice that quickie ratings do to a critic's work is the diminution they wreak on the movies themselves. Harmless and encroaching, stars have become the information that obscures the very thing they describe.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.