I Just Watched The Electric State On Netflix And It’s Not Nearly As Bad As Its (Dismal) Rotten Tomatoes Score Would Make You Think

If you are moseying around on Rotten Tomatoes this week, you might come across The Electric State reviews. And you might find those reviews to be unkind at best and blistering at worst. In fact, if you look at the critics scores, the new Netflix movie sounds like one of the worst 2025 movie releases so far, nabbing a loudly resounding 14% splat on the aggregator. But I think that has more to do with how RT tallies scores than it has to do with the actual quality of the movie.

The Electric State is the big, splashy movie out this weekend, at least on the Netflix schedule. It stars Chris Pratt and frequent Tudum darling Millie Bobby Brown. Its soundtrack plays heavily into ‘90s nostalgia. It’s directed by the Russo Brothers, who also famously helmed Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame (but also Cherry and The Gray Man). I watched it for the first time on Sunday afternoon, and I feel like the audience score of 75% is at least a little closer to the mark.

Why Rotten Tomatoes Critics Scores Are So Low

There’s a lot of critics who really did not enjoy The Electric State, but if you go through the 91 reviews the aggregator has filed, there are plenty who had positive things to say about the Millie Bobby Brown starrer. However, a lot of those critics were still middling on the movie at best. (C grade, 2.5/5 stars, 2/4 stars and so on and so forth.)

CinemaBlend’s own Nick Venable reviewed The Electric State as a 2.5 out of 5 star flick, which means he thought the film ranked somewhere in the blandly mediocre range. He didn't think the film was an outright disaster, but typically that score on Rotten Tomatoes would be a splat. And that’s where I think Rotten Tomatoes most fails the audience.

Part of the problem may be how Rotten Tomatoes calculates its scores. When movies are merely given a pass/ fail score, sometimes you end up with one that a lot of critics give neutral to slightly negative scores, and it'll end up looking worse than a film that most critics give terrible reviews to but a few contrarians recommend.

If all of these 2.5 out of 5 ratings were aggregated differently and not just given a splat + or- score, we’d probably have a movie that was closer to the 50% or 60% mark, which I think is a much fairer take on The Electric State. Is it the most amazing movie I’ve seen so far this year? Of course not; I’ve seen Alex Garland’s Warfare. But does it deserve as much vitriol as this 14% score indicates? That’s also a giant and resounding “no” from me.

I’ve Watched The Movie And It’s Alright, Alright, Alright.

I’d probably be even kinder than my CinemaBlend co-worker, but I do think a lot of ratings related toThe Electric State are the way they are because critics felt it was perfectly fine. I actually do get some of their criticisms of the new film, for sure. It could be a little funnier in tone, and the overarching plot about Brown’s character Michelle and her brother played out very oddly. I’m also still having a little trouble identifying with Mr. Peanut as a heroic robot.

Still, the voice cameos are fun. Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown work well together. The soundtrack could have featured a little less old man rock, but I would never ever complain about Tom Petty opening up a movie. And in general I was invested enough in the characters to keep watching. This movie is nothing like Kinda Pregnant, which also dropped to poor reviews on Netflix last month. The Electric State isn't perfect, but it deserves better than 14%!

In short, I’m not mad I watched the flick streaming: I already pay for a Netflix subscription,I had a bunch of free time yesterday to kill, and I definitely could have done much worse.

One final note, as middling Netflix movies do always lead me to one big question: If I’d paid to see the flick on the big screen, would I have been more disappointed in the outcome? In the case of The Russo Brothers' new movie, I honestly think the visuals would have been much cooler on a larger screen, so I would have been happy to pay to see the movie. If it passes the "I would be fine paying for this on the big screen" test, I'm certainly happy I watched it at home as part of my "included" subscription. You probably will be, too.