Here’s the person who ruined “Lady Bird’s” perfect Rotten Tomatoes score
Some may call it a witch hunt, others may call it justice. Vulture called it a necessary investigation. When Lady Bird’s perfect Rotten Tomatoes score fell from 100% to 99%, Vulture set out to find the culprit who dissed what some are calling Greta Gerwig’s magnum opus. The entertainment site followed through with their inquiry and found that a man named Cole Smithey is to blame.
Before Smithey came on the scene, Lady Bird was the top-rated movie on the Rotten Tomatoes site. Out of the 214 Rotten Tomatoes reviews for the coming-of-age film starring Saoirse Ronan, and 213 reviewers categorized it as “fresh.” Cole Smithey was the only critic who categorized Lady Bird as “rotten.”
First of all, why? And second of all, how dare he?
Smithey, the self-proclaimed “smartest film critic in the world” according to his website (lol), wrote that he found Gerwig’s film to be “dramatically flat.”
“There are dozens of coming-of-age films that far outweigh this lightweight contender,” Smithey wrote in his self-published December 7th review. He continued, “Lady Bird doesn’t have the courage of her convictions…If ever there was a signature mumblecore trait, this is it.”
Overall, Smithey originally gave the film a B- on Rotten Tomatoes but had to shift his rating to a C+ in order to technically categorize it as rotten. Then, assumingely after fans caught wind of and blasted him for his antics, he tweeted this:
Context is everything. I had to consider whether to cast “Lady Bird” as Fresh or Rotten in the context of a perfect score that people were using to trumpet “Lady Bird” as the all-time best reviewed movie on RT. A "B-" does not an "A+" make. @RottenTomatoes @LadyBirdMovie pic.twitter.com/fR7PJ5GfZD
— Cole Smithey: The Name Above The Title 📽️ (@colesmithey) December 13, 2017
"Context is everything," he wrote. "I had to consider whether to cast Lady Bird as Fresh or Rotten in the context of a perfect score that people were using to trumpet Lady Bird as the all-time best reviewed movie on RT. A 'B-" does not an 'A+' make."
Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But the issue here is that Smithey admitted in his tweet to having given Lady Bird a rotten review just to destroy its perfect score. Hmm…we’re not sure about you guys, but that seems a a lot jerk-y to us.
And it seems Smithey has used similar tactics on Rotten Tomatoes before. He did the same thing to Logan, It, Baby Driver, Dunkirk and Wonder Woman (we know, how DARE he).
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Honestly, this sounds like a case of “I’m going to be subversive for the sake of being subversive,” and his reviews don’t seem to be coming from a very pure or honest place.
Whether it’s 100% or 99% certified fresh, we know in our hearts that Lady Bird is perfect, and that’s all that matters. You can’t sway us, Smithey. You just can’t.