Rotten Tomatoes – Review

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By: FOX Interactive Media

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2009-12-16

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Price: 0.00

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Rotten Tomatoes has been my favorite entertainment Web site since I stumbled upon it more than five years ago. Launched in 1998, the site quickly worked its way up to becoming the internationally popular film review aggregate that it is today. Its famous Tomatometer–which assigns a percentage rating to a movie based on the reviews of distinguished film critics from prominent publications and determines whether a movie is Fresh (with a rating of at least 60%) or Rotten (59% and below)–is now so well established that it has become a ubiquitous detail in the Wikipedia pages of most feature-length films, giving readers a quick way of finding out whether a certain movie is most probably going to be worth their time watching.

After more than a decade of collecting reviews from various sources online, Rotten Tomatoes has finally made its exhaustive database of films available to iPhone users via a native application. The result: an app that is good at first glance but even better upon closer appraisal.

Sporting the same refreshing colors and themes found in its parent Web site, the app effectively brings the basic function of viewing the details of and reviews for a film in the Rotten Tomatoes database into an interface that is optimized for the iPhone platform. Instead of viewing the Rotten Tomatoes Web site on Mobile Safari, you can now easily browse the information pulled from that site using an outlet that is much easier to use and a lot less cluttered.

The app is divided into several sections, all of which are accessible by clicking on the icons at the bottom of the screen (swipe to the left or right across the icons to reveal more icons). The starting section, Movies, lets you know which films are currently making waves at the box office (listed under the category, Top Box Office), which ones just had their theatrical release (In Theaters), which ones are coming soon (Upcoming), and which ones have pleased the majority of pundits (Certified Fresh). A similar format is observed in the DVDs section, which houses the Top Rentals, New on DVD, Upcoming, and Certified Fresh subsections. A nifty "Download on iTunes" button is provided when you view the details of a DVD title, redirecting you to the film’s iTunes page where you can buy or rent it. Except for the Top Box Office and Top Rentals portions, which enumerate films according to their current sales, all lists can be viewed by title, release date, or Tomatometer rating. Of course, snippets of film reviews can be found when you tap an item in any list. Tap any of the snippets to read the corresponding review in full on the app’s built-in browser.

The Theaters section, using Google Maps, provides a way for you to know which films are screening in your neighborhood, which you can specify by letting the app use your current location or by entering your ZIP code in the app’s settings. You also have the option to call a theater for inquiries from right within the app.

The auto-suggestion-enabled Search function is by far my most used feature of the app. Since I discovered Rotten Tomatoes, I have been inclined to consult the authoritative Tomatometer scale before I decide to watch a film that I know little about. Especially when I’m in front of a rummage bin in a local video store, I am wont to whip out my iPhone, launch the app, point to the search bar, enter the title of the movie that caught my fancy, and see whether it’s Fresh enough (or, in some cases, Rotten enough) to sustain my interest in buying and watching the video.

I am genuinely impressed with this iPhone-optimized version of Rotten Tomatoes. It brings some of the most frequently accessed features of the site to the iPhone and does it really well. The app periodically needs to download new data from the Rotten Tomatoes servers to ensure that the information presented therein are all up-to-date. Although I’d very much like to have the ability to read the feature articles written by the cleverly funny staff of Rotten Tomatoes on the app itself, I can’t really point out a flaw in its execution. I’m just looking forward to seeing the features, whatever they may be, that will be added in the future updates of this already excellent, feature-packed application.

"Never see a bad movie again," says the developer’s notes. With the brilliantly designed Rotten Tomatoes app, it’s highly likely that you’ll never have to. But then the notes add a parenthetical follow-up: "Unless you really want to." With the brilliantly designed Rotten Tomatoes app, you can do that too.