So I checked out TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN over the weekend. And I must say, I agree with popular opinions — both of them, the critics and the unwashed masses. TRANSFORMERS 2 is definitely stupid and ridiculous, at any level a terrible film. I also quite liked it.

Which seems to be how people in general are perceiving the film. Critics hate it, but audiences think it is much better than the first TRANSFORMERS.

That article I linked to points out that it is Michael Bay’s worst film ever on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator. But what I find really interesting is that is is also Bay’s second-best reviewed film ever on Metacritic (behind THE ROCK). Rotten Tomatoes, of course, merely looks at whether reviewers liked a film, then averages the number of positive votes. Metacritic, on the other hand, assigns a value to each vote, then takes that average.

So what does that mean? It means that most critics on balance dislike TRANSFORMERS 2, but they do not dislike it that much. But for Bay’s previous films, opinions were more divided, with some people liking them more but others hating them more.

Math is so much fun.