A looooooong time ago I attended a talk with Roger Ebert (pre-illness and jaw surgery) where he kinda put this into perspective. During the Q&A, someone jokingly gave him a hard time about giving
The Santa Clause 2 three stars while he gave some more prestige-y movie I can't remember (so we'll just call it
Prestige Movie) 2.5 stars. They were like, "so does that mean you really feel
Santa Clause 2 was a better, more worthwhile movie than
Prestige Movie"? And he said he scores movies based on how good they are at being the type of movie they're trying to be. So he said those scores meant he thought
The Santa Clause 2 was better at being a Santa Clause movie than
Prestige Movie was at being a Prestige Movie. That kinda made movie ratings make a lot more sense to my teenage brain.