dan coulter.com

I realized recently that I need a baseline for all of the horrible movies coming out this year.  If I could have one standard way to describe just how terrible a movie is, I could make sense of Hollywood’s seeming inability to put out good creative movies.  That’s when it came to me.  On Rotten Tomatoes, Paul Blart: Mall Cop is currently rated at 27%.  This is slightly better than Push (25%).  That’s a powerful statement about Push that it was rated lower than Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  Based on that, a rating system soon formed in my mind.  Movies are now rated in “Blarts” or the ratio of the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score to Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s RT score.  Less than one Blart is absolutely terrible; 2 Blarts is mediocre; 3 Blarts is probably worth seeing; and 4 Blarts is slightly higher than a 100% score.  How does this work out on some current movies, you ask?

• Push = .9 Blarts
• The Pink Panther 2 = .4 Blarts
• Coraline = 3.3 Blarts
• The International = 2 Blarts
• He’s Just Not That Into You = 1.6 Blarts