While they definitely measure on different metrics, the goal of a critic is supposed to be to measure films worth watching (even if only for a subset of the total audience). When 95% of critics tell you to see a movie that only 10% of people enjoy, something's broken.
It depends on what you mean by "worth watching".
Well... expectations shift between a movie ticket and a bucket of popcorn for 10€ or the same for 30€.
Cinema has gone really damn expensive, and loaded with ads to boot - but movie critics don't get that crap experience, they get exclusive previews. It's literally a different world.
My GF adds other points: while the audience as a general loves "typical plot" movies, critics who have to see 20 movies based on the same formula a year will be sick of it.
Imagine applying that metric to any other job.
"Fuck, this is the 20th React component I've had to build...I'll just do it shitty instead."
I believe I addressed this. I specifically mentioned that they have different metrics so you wouldn't expect it to fully lineup. It's the drastic disconnect that is the problem. If critics love a movie but literally no one else does, what are they seeing? Or, more directly, what is the point of me putting any validity into their words?
40 million people not paid to review movies seem to hate this movie; but the 100 people who love it are both A) paid to watch it and B) seem to entirely fit the vast minority of viewers who like it.
You can't apply necessity to art. I don't have to eat some shitty art-film to survive.
* - Hate is probably an overloaded word anyways. I don't know many kids who genuinely "hate" broccoli, they just think eating broccoli means they won't get ice cream because they don't have rational thought processes and can't think/imagine beyond the next fifteen minutes. Adults can, and so the distaste is less extreme, because they can have ice cream on their cheat day. But obesity rates would show that nothing really changes, in how much they "like" things.
Nowadays my first guess would be a black actor in a role previously played by whites.
Such a big difference looks like review bombing
There are far more where the verified audience score is way higher and they tend to either be religious films or films with very low numbers of audience reviews (aka selection bias)
Clearly though their is more to a movie or book than just the plot.
Of course it's impossible for one person's evidence to refute what happens "in general", but either this isn't true for me, or I don't understand what you mean. I love broccoli. I don't hate ice cream, but I certainly wouldn't eat it every day, which I'd be happy to do for broccoli. I don't think I'm responding in any significant way to external factors, only to eating one regularly making me feel better than eating the other regularly. I don't imagine my experience to be universal, but nor do I imagine it to be very rare.
However, I addressed your point:
> obesity rates would show that nothing really changes, in how much they "like" things.
If everyone loved healthy food and hated treats, obesity rates wouldn't be so high, and Frito-Lay wouldn't be one of the most profitable food companies in the world. Obviously, no general claim is universal.