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10/10
Magnificent and under-appreciated movie
16 December 2004
The Greengage Summer is impeccably acted, directed, scripted, filmed, and scored. Excellence abounds which is why it remains one of my favorites. I join in the nearly unanimous chorus for its release on video as well. But, there is a mystery I simply find imponderable here. I hope the Editor who reviews this comment will be kind enough to e-mail me an answer to the mystery if he or she has one. My email is hblank@qedinternational.com

The mystery is this. 40 of the 59 IMDb reviewers rank this movie 10 out of 10. The other 19 votes stratify down in descending order with the lowest being a 4. The arithmetic mean of these ratings is 9.1; yet the only IMDb rating listed on the main page is something called "the weighted" average which is a lower ranking than 54 of the 59 respondents at 6.6. How can this be? As I understand it, the weighted average gives a higher weight to those who have reviewed the most movies on IMDb. But, I've NEVER seen anything close to this kind of disparity between the arithmetic mean and the weighted average -- I found just a very few with more than a 1.2-point differential, but 2.5???

What, was some 19-year old who has reviewed 100,000 science-fiction and action movies for IMDb forced by his mother to watch The Greengage Summer, so out of spite and anger, he contributed the four -- and because he's watched and reviewed such a gigantic number of movies, everything gets skewed in the direction of his vote??? Am I warm? Could you please provide us with the answer?

I think that 6.6 represents a huge distortion from the large chorus of diverse reasons for loving the film. Therefore, I humbly request an executive review and overriding this formula, perhaps splitting the difference to 7.8 or 7.9. I think that the comments make it clear that 7.8 or 7.9 is far more representatives of what IMDb movie-watchers think of The Greengage Summer than a mediocre 6.6.

Is there any chance of a revision? If not, could you please explain to us devoted fans why?

Anyway, this criticism aside, IMDb provides an excellent service for us all, and I urge you to keep up the good work.
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