8 History Movies Critics Hated That Audiences Would Fight For. The Crowd Was Right.

Critics graded these history movies like term papers. Audiences graded them like Friday night. Today movie guru takes the crowd's side, loudly, with receipts.

The last one made a billion dollars and still can't win critics over.

1. 8
   Bonhoeffer (2024)6.4

   Critics shrugged. The crowd handed it an A.

   Metacritic gave it a 43. Paying audiences gave it an A CinemaScore. A pastor standing up to the Nazi regime is a story people clearly wanted told straight.
2. 7
   Song Sung Blue (2025)7.8

   Jackman and Hudson made critics stingy and crowds happy.

   Metacritic 61, which is critic for 'fine, I guess.' Audiences gave it an A and it sits at 7.8 on the movie.guru score. The crowd heard something critics missed.
3. 6
   Nuremberg (2025)7.8

   Russell Crowe versus Rami Malek in a courtroom. Critics, sit down.

   Metacritic 61, audience scores better than 90% of movies, and $71.1M worldwide on a reported $40M budget. People showed up for a serious trial movie. That almost never happens.
4. 5
   Sight (2023)6.7

   Metacritic's 42 is the weird number here, not the A.

   Reported $8.5M budget, Terry Chen and Greg Kinnear, zero spectacle. Audiences still handed it an A CinemaScore and a 6.7 movie.guru score. Earnest works when it's honest.
5. 4
   A Great Awakening (2026)7.4

   The crowd gave it an A+. Critics gave it homework.

   It made $8,149,028 domestic and earned an A+ CinemaScore, the rarest grade there is. Critics stopped at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. Close, but the crowd won by a mile.
6. 3
   The Boys in the Boat (2023)7.0

   George Clooney made a rowing movie. Dads everywhere were right.

   Rotten Tomatoes 58, Metacritic 54. Then an A CinemaScore and $52.6M domestic on a reported $40M budget. Guys rowing in a straight line shouldn't be this gripping.
7. 2
   Reagan (2024)5.1

   18% on Rotten Tomatoes. A CinemaScore. Someone's out of touch.

   Dennis Quaid playing the 40th president, $30M domestic on a reported $25M budget, and a Metacritic of 22. Critics vs. crowd here is the widest gap on this list.
8. 1
   Michael (2026)6.2

   A billion dollars worldwide says critics missed this one.

   Rotten Tomatoes 38. Then $1.03B worldwide, an A minus CinemaScore, and a 7.3 on IMDb from nearly 196,000 voters. Jaafar Jackson carried it. That's a lot of people to call wrong.

$388.17 says someone in the comments defends the rowing movie harder than the billion-dollar one.

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Current mood: ready to fight about it