Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
For a brief, shining moment on Thursday, after the review embargo on Meg 2: The Trench had lifted and critics’ first caustic words about it had spilled forth onto the internet like so many fish guts, it boasted a 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Heavens parted; angels wept. Audiences, I imagine, readied themselves to go to the theaters for the singular phenomenon known as Barbenheimeg. (At least that’s what I did.) Nothing gold can stay, however, and within hours the rating had see-sawed, then settled at a more respectable 27 percent.
Still, the vast majority of critics had had their fill at the feeding frenzy. CNN: “Goes from Shark Week to shark weak.” IndieWire: “Bizarrely convoluted.” RogerEbert.com: “Dismally boring.” New York: “Should have been stupider.” Even my esteemed colleague, Nick Schager, was duly unimpressed, calling the movie’s premise “the height of idiocy.”