the User Reviews seem to be more accurate but RT does manipulate them as well citing "view botting" for any trends that do not match their desired outcome from a film
They would generate that score by looking at other things you have rated, finding ~100 other users who have voted similarly to you, and then showing the scores that those other users thought of each movie you are thinking of watching.
This is much harder to bot, since you will only see the botted scores if you yourself vote like a bot.
I don't share many values with movie critics. Here's an spicy example that will mark me as a philistine forever.
I think Princess Mononoke was an awful film with a navel gazing director who gets treated far too kindly because of a childish desire for "whimsy". Everytime I see a Ghibli pusher here, I laugh.
No movie critic will engage with such a perspective (because it is "wrong", the movie is "powerful", the art is "beautiful" and the characters are "strong" — every one of which is literally a matter of interpretation). Depending on critics is depending on people who have to satisfy their local equivalent of the Reddit front page. Why would you trust them except to know the current rightthink?
It's not the same as a scientist describing climate change or an engineer explaining the loads on a bridge.
Freddy Got Fingered, the movie I personally found funniest, is currently at 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's full of creative and quotable scenes, and never resorts to tired cliches (despite its genre there is no toilet humor). Penalizing a gross-out comedy for being "gross" is a clear failure of criticism. Even Roger Ebert, who usually judged movies by the standards of the genre, made this mistake.
Batman v Superman, the superhero movie I personally found most engaging, is at 29%. It's one of the few movies in the genre that feels like it has any ambition to be serious art. It takes the characters seriously, without the constant jokes the Marvel movies use to reassure the audience that they're not really comic book nerds. Critics considered this a reason to rate it poorly.
While I don't personally like the "gross-out" style of movie, the the discussion of the movie exposed a lot of nuance behind the movie that I didn't know. The difference between the conversation and the original "professional reviews" really was telling; I much prefer the former to the later.
*: I am aware of the contradiction; in my defense, I mostly care about their comments about movie structure.
It's easily one of my favourite films for these reasons.