RunPee's Grading Scale

Every movie on RunPee carries a letter grade alongside its Peetimes: A, B, C, D or F. Here's who gives it, what each grade means, and how to read it.

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The Scale

It's the school report card: A is best, F is failing, and there's no E. Each grade can also take a plus or a minus, so it's a lot finer than five steps.

At a glance:

A: the best of its genre. Worth a special trip to the theater.
B: good. The ceiling for a popcorn movie. The ticket isn't wasted.
C: squarely average. Fine to see, no loss if you don't.
D: below average. Don't buy a theater ticket for it.
F: a failure across the board. Don't watch it.

Converting to Stars

If you think in five stars, here's a rough conversion:

A+: 5 stars
A: 4½ stars
A−: 4 stars
B+: 3½ stars
B: 3 stars
B−: 2½ stars
C+: 2 stars
C: 1½ stars
C−: 1 star
D and below: half a star, down to none

The conversion is just a quick guide. The letter is what we actually use and what the app shows.

One line we hold ourselves to:

Below C−, we won't suggest you buy a theater ticket.

That doesn't mean don't watch it. It means don't watch it in a theater. You're not only buying a ticket. You're spending two hours and the trip.

A: The Best of Its Genre

First, so this grade doesn't get misread: we grade within a genre. A horror movie and a biopic don't share a ruler. An A doesn't mean "the greatest movie of the year." It means "whatever a movie of this kind can do, this one did it all the way."

A+ movies tend to have a few things in common:

They have flaws, of course, but every one is too small to matter. None of them affects the plot, the characters or whether the premise holds up.
You react. You laugh, you cry, you want to applaud in your seat. Whatever it is, you don't walk out unmoved.
The filmmaking may be unusual, but it never feels like a stunt.
The performances hold: weight where there should be weight, comic timing down to the beat, or simply making you believe it.
And one more thing we can't quite name. A kind of glow. We don't have a better word for it, but everyone knows it when they see it.

A is a very good movie missing that last thing. Maybe the villain was a little weak, or the ending didn't quite land. Everything else is great; it just never lit up.

Worth saying on its own: special effects don't earn a grade by themselves. However big the spectacle, it doesn't decide the letter. What makes you react does.

Movies we've given an A+ include Avengers: Endgame and 1917, and older films like Jurassic Park and Jaws.

B: The Ceiling for a Popcorn Movie

This is where most of the movies people actually go see land.

B+ is very enjoyable, with no ambitions toward awards or anyone's top ten of the year. Plot problems don't matter much; if it's fun enough, the fun cancels them out.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and its sequel are textbook B+. Strip the plot down and it's stale and predictable, and the whole thing runs on one idea: people stuck in the wrong bodies, floundering through ridiculous situations. But the cast is genuinely entertaining together, the movie is warm, and the chemistry is real.

B is the standard popcorn movie: a few likable characters, some action scenes with punch, and an unspoken deal. The implausibility is part of it, the audience knows, and that's what they came for.

The Fast & Furious movies are the best example. Cars parachuting out of a plane to race down a mountain road. A car driven out of one Abu Dhabi skyscraper and into another. Nobody believes any of it, including the people who made it. But it's fun, so it doesn't count against them.

B− is enjoyable and forgotten by the time you reach the parking lot. The set pieces aren't bad; they're just absurd enough to pull you out of the movie. Same implausibility, but a B makes you laugh and a B− makes you check out. San Andreas lands here.

C: The Hardest Grade to Write, and the Most Honest

C is the middle of the bell curve: watchable, but it won't make you feel much, and it doesn't ask much of you.

C+ is the most frustrating. It could have been good and fell just short. The cast doesn't click, someone was miscast, a good actor got a so-so script, or the director couldn't pull it all together. You walk out with a mild regret: it was so close.

C is dead center. These movies have their uses. Maybe you want to watch a star obviously there for the paycheck. Maybe you've followed a series through three movies and have to see the fourth, however bad. Maybe there's truly nothing else playing.

C− is a little below average, but not failing. Worth watching, just not in a theater. It's a fine pick for streaming. Fan-service sequels and competent thrillers with nothing memorable in them often land here.

We don't name examples for C. There are too many, and singling one out wouldn't be fair.

D: You Walk Out Feeling Short-Changed

D isn't "so bad it's fun." It's you spent the money, you sat there for two hours, and you walk out feeling the trip wasn't worth it.

There are a frightening number of ways a movie can fail: acting, casting, directing, premise, script, score, chemistry, world-building, atmosphere, effects, a villain who doesn't hold up, a climax that doesn't land, set pieces, continuity, dialogue, and rewriting an earlier movie to set up a sequel. A D usually fails at several at once.

D+ is bad, but not without something to offer. The movies so strangely bad that people seek them out for fun usually land here too.

D− is worse. At this point our advice isn't "don't buy a theater ticket." It's "don't spend the time."

F: A Complete Failure

F leaves you with nothing but disappointment. It might have a good actor, or a director who's usually reliable, but the whole thing just doesn't stand up.

F− has not one redeeming quality, and is often unpleasant on top of that. It doesn't even qualify as "so bad it's fun." That takes a certain accidental charm, and an F− doesn't have it.

Resident Evil: Retribution is one of the movies we've given an F.

An honest note: some movies we gave an F are ones critics quite like, such as The Witch and The Lighthouse. We haven't changed those grades, and we don't think the critics are wrong. Our grades come from a small group of people who see a lot of movies, and a small group has tastes. The upside is that the ruler stays the same year after year. Read a few of our grades on movies you've seen, and you'll quickly learn how our B+ lines up with yours.

Our Reviews

Besides grades, we write reviews. The people writing them aren't professional critics. They're RunPee's Peeps, the same people sitting in theaters finding Peetimes.

There are three kinds:

New release reviews, written right after a movie opens. Mostly wide releases. This is the large majority.
Rewatch reviews, for movies we're deliberately watching again. Some are classics, some are recent movies worth a closer look. The first time through you're following the plot; the second time your eyes are free for everything else.
First-watch reviews, for older movies we never got to and are seeing for the first time now. Everyone reached a verdict on these long ago. What does someone seeing it fresh have to say?

We don't spoil. If a review truly has to get into the plot, we say so at the top.