experiment for adam carolla and The Hammer
i dig adam carolla, but he’s damned annoying in that his logic seems to be stuck at a few notches above standard dipshit. he regularly rants against “government”, accurately using the word communism to describe PBS, for example. he correctly screams that public libraries are pieces of shit that should be abolished, but what does he recommend doing with the empty buildings? convert to state building inspection and DMV offices. he’s stuck, a born statist.
his logic fails as well when it concerns his projects. listeners to his radio show heard for weeks that his movie The Hammer got phenomenal ratings at rottentomatoes.com. when others point out to him that one cannot compare even semi-accurately the ratings of a mainstream movie against his basically unreleased movie seen primarily by fans, he counters with the assurance that hey, his fans never hesitate to set him straight; they’re the first to downgrade his work when deserved.
in context, that’s full bullshit. his fans were pissed that his movie didn’t get a broad theater release, and their allegiance against “the man” (or whatever) generally comes before criticism of the movie, which though strong in parts is hardly the epic i’ve heard wanked over for many months. some of it’s painfully cheesy. many of his fans are decrepit drones who don’t even come close to adam’s non-stellar perspicacity, however much they may admire it, and it’s obvious from the reviews at amazon that the dummkopf troops are gathering to support the DVD release (adam has asked them specifically to leave positive reviews at amazon).
as much as adam bitches about the conditional positive reviews from critics (e.g., “surprisingly, it’s not that bad” sorta stuff), the ratings from his fans are obviously conditional, handing out 5-star reviews as if in awe that a monkey was able to sign a coherent sentence — twenty-nine 5-star reviews and two 4-star — nothing else. no fucking way does that represent the usual public slice evaluating this movie.
rather than argue completely against the illogic behind his trumpeting of the rottentomatoes numbers, i’ll sit back and watch them beyond tomorrow’s DVD release. the “RT Community” rating is 96%:
Reviews Counted: 183
Fresh: 177 Rotten:6
Average Rating: 9.1/10
at IMDb, 873 votes give a composite rating of 7.4 — pretty high for IMDb, and i contend well influenced by the disparate fan proportion via the stealth theater release.
if adam’s correct, those ratings should remain high long after the DVD release. assuming sales are above tepid, we’ll see.
[080624: morning of the DVD release (IMDb votes tabulated from day before — probably mostly early-arriving mail preorders), IMDb is up to 7.5, 894 votes.]