Lautner’s Abs = Good Movie, A Mathematical Breakdown

by Gerry Carey

RottenTomatoes.com has a dedicated page for every movie under the sun. Each page includes details such as stars of the film, budget, box office gross, and reviews. The reviews are the main draw for the website, the cash cow if you will. The purpose of this explanation is that Taylor Lautner’s newest movie, Abduction, seems to be at the center of quite a phenomenon: a polar difference of opinion between critics and audience.

As the picture above indicates, something is undeniably amiss. Critics across the nation think that this movie is one of the worst they have seen. A 4% rating puts Abduction shoulder to shoulder with other 2011 movies like The Roommate (4%) and Big Momma: Like Father, Like Son (5%). Meanwhile, the audience is loving Taylor’s newest effort. A 77% from the audience is quite an endorsement. Quality movies like Hanna, The Debt, and Cedar Rapids have all received lower audience ratings this year. The obvious conclusion is that critics don’t properly value abdominal muscles when they give their ratings.

Taylor Lautner has roughly 12 distinct abdominal muscles. Each seems to be worth about 6.1 Audience Happy Points in the eyes of sexually charged tweens with internet access. The following is a patented formula from Cinematic Method, do not redistribute it without our express written consent:

(Audience Rating) – (TomatoMeter) = (How much critics overlook abs)

77 – 4 = 73 (Critics overlooked Taylor Lautner’s abs to a level of 73, we will call this the “Why-Is-The-Audience-So-Stupid-Coefficient“)

(Why-Is-The-Audience-So-Stupid-Coefficient) / (The Number of Abs Taylor Lautner Possesses) = (Number of Audience Happy Points)

73 / 12 = 6.1 (If I hear someone tell me this is not an exact figure, I’m going to lose my mind and begin spitting at them)

As you can see, our Why-Is-The-Audience-So-Stupid-Coefficient for Abduction is one of the highest any of us could ever dream. 100 is technically the highest possible score since all critics could give the movie a negative review and all of the audience could give the movie a positive review, but realistically, this 73 is close to the top. Why are the critics so out of touch with what makes the audience happy? Do they not understand that every time they catch a glimpse of a single Taylor Lautner ab they should be roughly 6.1 percent happier? Maybe they were focused too much on his giraffe neck?

I think the lesson here is that we are all trying, in vain, to objectively look at movies and judge whether or not they are worth the precious time and money of the public. We are all trying, and the preteen girls are ruining everything for us. I don’t know what could possibly stop the juggernaut that is tween fanhood, but if they’re banding together for 15,000 ratings on this film, I’m afraid rottentomatoes.com will explode from Happy Points soon after the release of Breaking Dawn.

If you can find a film with a higher “Why-Is-The-Audience-So-Stupid-Coefficient” let us know, we’re intrigued to see what you can come up with. So far, Boondock Saints is the only higher score we can find at 76 (93 – 17 = 76). We’re not as sure abdominal muscles have anything to do with that discrepancy.