Summer movies just keep crashing and burning with critics

Yet another tentpole release of the 2019 summer movie season is receiving a critical lambasting.

Men in Black: International on Wednesday became the season's latest highly-anticipated film to be panned, as it was hit with a low Rotten Tomatoes score of 30 percent, indicating this percentage of critics liked it — although that score will change as more reviews are posted. Variety called the movie "a mess," while The Atlantic described it as "fundamentally boring," Entertainment Weekly labeled it a "terrible reboot," and ScreenCrush declared it full of "mediocrity in every conceivable sense."

It's only June, yet this is at least the fifth big-budget film of the summer to receive mixed-to-negative reviews and a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics weren't over the moon for Disney's Aladdin remake, which earned a 56 percent score compared to 71 percent for 2017's Beauty and the Beast and 95 percent for 2016's The Jungle Book. Then there was Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which only got a 40 percent score compared to 75 percent for the 2014 predecessor.

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The Secret Life of Pets 2 also got a mixed 55 percent score, down from 73 percent from the original, and the X-Men film Dark Phoenix drew the worst reviews of the entire series with a brutal 23 percent rating. Pokémon Detective Pikachu, meanwhile, just barely dodged a "rotten" score.

Audiences haven't been much more receptive to many of these franchise films, with Dark Phoenix and Godzilla both bombing at the box office, while The Secret Life of Pets 2 is also underperforming, although Aladdin has been a hit. Among the only major wide releases since Avengers: Endgame to completely stick the landing with both critics and audiences was John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. Overall, the ratio of hits to misses hasn't been great.

Toy Story 4 hits theaters on June 20, though, and has received positive critical buzz, meaning it could be on Pixar to pick critics and audiences up out of this surprising summer slump.