We hate to reduce our opinion on anything to a simple number, but we have to concede: Star-ratings are kinda fun, and people like to see them. Beyond that, a star-rating can be a useful bullet-point when summarizing our overall opinion about something. We don’t take them too seriously — but here is a list of all our possible star-ratings, and what a given rating might mean, in a general sense:
5.0 Stars: A masterpiece, duh! But to sound loftier: A work of depth and ambition. Something artful, memorable, beguiling, haunting. A timeless classic.
4.5 Stars: Excellent stuff! Artful. Memorable. Transcends the constraints of genre. Something you’ll want to talk about.
4.0 Stars: Very good! Both memorable and artful. A great example of its genre.
3.5 Stars: Better than average. Memorable.
3.0 Stars: The upper half of average. Reasonably-entertaining, if not especially memorable.
2.5 Stars: The lower half of average. Reasonably-entertaining, but there are some problems here.
2.0 Stars: We did not find ourselves terribly engaged, but there might be some technical merits here — or this might be good content underserved by poor execution.
1.5 Stars: Not good. Perhaps we can find one or two positive bones to throw at this thing — but overall, we didn’t enjoy it for any of the intended reasons.
1 Star: Flat-out bad. If there were any redeeming qualities here, we missed them. However, unintended humor can sometimes be found in bad things, and such might be the case here.
Half a Star: Hot garbage. Unusually bad. Not exactly offensive, but poorly-crafted and no fun at all — not even in an ironic way.
Zero Stars: Don’t waste your time, or anyone else’s. Let’s just forget this exists.