GameSpot's Borderlands review is somehow more forgettable than the movie
The Original Review
“For most of its length, Borderlands is just unremarkable, the sort of thing that fades from the mind so quickly that it's actually difficult to dislike it with any real intensity.”
The math ain't mathing, and neither is the courage. Phil Owen walks into the biggest critical layup of 2024 — a universally despised video game movie that was dead on arrival — and gives it a 2/10 like he just uncovered some hidden truth. Bro, the Rotten Tomatoes score was already in the teens before you filed your copy. Giving Borderlands a 2/10 is like giving a dumpster fire a negative Yelp review. We KNOW. The real question is: why not a 1? What's that one extra point for? Did Claptrap's voice acting move you? Was there a single frame of Jack Black's performance that made you think 'this deserves to be twice as good as the worst thing I've ever seen'? The scoring methodology here is deeply suspect.
And then there's the actual review text, which is somehow MORE forgettable than the movie it's reviewing. Owen writes that the film 'fades from the mind so quickly that it's actually difficult to dislike it with any real intensity.' Phil. My guy. You just described YOUR OWN REVIEW. I read it twenty minutes ago and I'm already struggling to recall a single original observation. 'Generic and disposable' — that's not criticism, that's a fortune cookie for film students. You could slap that subtitle on 60% of all movies ever made and nobody would argue.
Here's the fundamental scoring paradox: if the movie is so forgettable that you can't even muster real dislike, how does it earn a 2/10? A 2 implies active badness, something memorably terrible. But your own words describe a 4 — mediocre, bland, the cinematic equivalent of elevator music. You've created a logical contradiction between your prose and your number. The review says 'meh,' the score says 'atrocity.' Pick a lane, Phil. When your written analysis and your numerical rating are having two completely different conversations, the math doesn't just not math — it's speaking in tongues.
Final calculation: one point deducted for scoring cowardice (just give it the 1, you coward), one point deducted for the review being as generic as the movie it criticizes, and one point awarded for at least having the decency to keep it short. We give this review a 3/10. The formula is simple, even if Phil's isn't.
