I really don't know the answer to this:
Option A: It's a great film that couldn't get released properly - sold to a newspaper - everybody wins. Very high rating on IMDB - deserves to be seen.
Option B: It's a pile of pants but has Vinny Jones and Derek Jacobi in a comedy wig. I trust IMDB but these limited reviews and votes are just too hyped to be bona fide. Surely.... (?)
What is the answer? You decide...
If the reason this is free with the MoS is because they couldn't get distribution, I'm not at all surprised. 'The Riddle' fails in every aspect, from concept to dubbing. The 'mystery' which it promises you will be dying to solve for yourself is a continuous series of predictable plot revelations to 'Mike Sullivan', who has obviously been in the pub all the time he should have been at writing classes. And when I say 'plot', I mean 'sequence of events with the distinct feeling that BF made them up without editing as he went along' Please, Brendan - a greyhound correspondent romancing a police press officer? A greyhound correspondent? A GREYHOUND CORRESPONDENT? Did you blow the budget on Jacobi & Redgrave so the local pub quiz team had to help out in the cast department? This makes 'Eastenders' look like 'The Sopranos', no, sorry, like a really bad episode of the Sopranos. And Ee's still miles better than this pile of dreck.
shareIt should be noted that most of the really witheringly negative comments are written by first-timers as well. One of them, in fact, admits to not even having seen the movie before proceeding to trash it.
THE RIDDLE is, at worst, an average film. Several of these comments describing it as the worst movie ever seem patently unrealistic to me, while some border on the absurd.
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Worst is subjective. But it plays like a Roger Corman grindhouse quickie without the charm. It's not average: The Transporter would be average in my book and in no way does The Riddle come close to it. Worst: yes that I've seen in the past few years as I don't attend Festivals etc or rent unknowns.
shareIt's all subjective. Your opinion is valid, as is mine. But user comments written with the express purpose of totally condemning a film that doesn't deserve it are just as bad as the shills, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it.
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<i>But user comments written with the express purpose of totally condemning a film that doesn't deserve it </i>
You are being subjective. In your opinion its not the worst. In mine it is
Then your review of the film is "genuine." I'm referring to the ones that obviously aren't.
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How can you tell? The only truth is that the film received an unbelievably high rating which would have remained high IF it had not been given away free. Once that happened the rating has gone down each day as more people added their comments. In all my years on IMDB I've never bothered much with adding comments but I think the Riddle saga renders the rating system as close to useless because it is open to very easy manipulation. It is straightforward to open multiple identities from one confirmed Amazon username...
shareHow can you tell?
According to several comments I've read on this board, the main way to tell is if the comment is the only one the user has ever written, which seems to indicate that they aren't "regular" users whose opinions are to be taken seriously. It has been pointed out that several of the positive comments are from first-timers. If these are to be discounted or suspected of being false, then the overtly negative comments from first-timers (the majority of them, in fact) should be regarded in the same way. Neither is more acceptable than the other.
True, more people have commented since the movie became more widely seen, but that doesn't mean that all of the comments have suddenly gone from "fake" to "real." One user admits to holding a grudge against the film to the point of basing his username on it, while another (as I've already mentioned) wrote a negative review before even having seen it. My point is that comments on THE RIDDLE aren't necessarily more reliable just because they're negative to the extreme.
Personally, I think it's a good movie, and my opinion is just as valid as that of anyone who, for whatever reason, describes it as the "worst."
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Really we in agreement on one point: the IMDB voting is far to easy to manipulate either way.
share- whoever was behind it, be it people who worked on the film or the paper. The trouble is extremes on either end only encourage the kind of reaction the film is now getting. The film isn't worth 10/10 and it isn't worth 1/10, but seeing people try to bump up the rating with all the 10/10s this originally had (its original IMDB rating was 9.5) was such a shameless - but increasingly common -bit of manipulation that it set the more cynical IMDBers against the film and had them voting 1/10 to try to counteract the vote-rigging. For less cynical users who maybe checked on the film's rating before buying the Mail and found that it was a long way short of 10/10 status, it simply set them up for a disappointment. Had the film had its current rating of 6.5, expectations would have been lower, and with them the level of disappointment (and the anger that some feel about being conned into buying it). What probably would have ended up with a 5.1 or a 5.4 final rating will now probably keep dropping until, it reaches 4/10.
This kind of thing has happened in the past where very obvious attempts to manipulate a high rating have caused a backlash on pictures - Timbo Hines The War of the Worlds and faked-doc My Date With Drew in particular were so ridiculously overhyped that they drew active hostility where otherwise they'd have probably been ignored (which accounts for those negative reviews from first-time reviewers: Robbie Moffat's self-penned rave reviews of his own inept movies under his own IMDB id provoke a similar reaction in people who rarely write reviews). In time the user rating will settle to a realistic level, though at present most voters here are unimpressed enough with the film for it to drop every day.
"This time it's no more Mr. Passive Resistance!"
It doesn't appear to be as precipitous a drop as predicted, though--after hundreds of new votes the rating seems to be settling into the 6-and-over range, which is ultimately a reasonable rating for this movie, I think. And there haven't been any more first-timer user comments of the "utterly dire" variety for awhile, so maybe most the people who felt cheated by the over-hyped movie that they got for the price of a newspaper have finally had their say. At any rate, I believe that once the ratings war between the two extremes has finally died down, THE RIDDLE, unlike Tim Hines' execrable WAR OF THE WORLDS, will continue to find its audience.
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[deleted]
Didn't you already post that verbatim on the previous page?
Anyway, THE TRANSPORTER was a $21,000,000 action flick from 20th Century Fox. THE RIDDLE is a $5,000,000 independent feature that doesn't have a lot of explosions and car chases in it. "Average" is a relative term which, I think, is just as applicable to one as it is to the other. (I happen to think they're both above-average.) Moreover, I don't get a "Roger Corman-grindhouse quickie" vibe from THE RIDDLE at all, and still find it odd that anyone who actually watches a lot of movies could consider it the "worst" film of recent years, however subjective that may be.
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After that early high rating, now real people have seen it the rating keeps on dropping down. It's gone from 9.5 to 5.6. Says it all.
My fee iz negoshiable. Ze analyziz iz nodt!
Trouble is, a lot of the "real" people seem to be punitively rating it lower than it deserves just to trash it. Excessive condemnation is no more valid than excessive praise.
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If it would have been a good movie, we won't be talking on IMDB like this...it says it all..... the movie is a crap..... & if someone likes to appreciate a CRAP, no one can help....
AM I DREAMING??? WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT?share
"If it would have been a good movie, we won't be talking on IMDB like this"
Why not? People "talk on IMDb like this" about most movies, good and bad.
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