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Robert De Niro — he’s one of those names you think of when you think about acting itself. Or at least he was. Sure, De Niro gave us The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, and Meet the Parents, but his recent movie choices have been a little less than spectacular. When you’ve starred in over 100 movies, you’re bound to have a couple of flops, but in De Niro’s case, the divide between good and bad movies is more extreme (looking at you, Dirty Grandpa). Thanks to one dedicated Redditor, we now know the exact moment De Niro stopped caring.
This Reddit user painstakingly sorted through the Rotten Tomatoes scores of every movie Robert De Niro has ever starred in and mapped those films to a chart. Though Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t have the best system for pointing out so-so movies (each critical review that makes up a film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is either labelled as a positive or negative review, so there’s little room for middling reviews), it sure can point out amazing moments in cinema and those pesky box office flops. So when was the year that De Niro went from Certified Fresh to Rotten?
2002. Here’s the chart if you want to see the decline for yourself.
It’s hard to argue with the results. Those Meet the Parents sequels really were rough. However, the creator of the graph wants us all to know that his analysis was created out of love. The creator offered his own delightfully illustrated version of a De Niro peace offering shortly after his De Niro apathy chart gained attention.
Keep doing you, De Niro. Even Robert De Niro at his Rotten Tomatoes worst is still Robert freaking De Niro. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
