yeah but it's not great either!  that's what "meh" means, doesn't it?

This.

Meh isn't a 5. A meh is a decent movie (pretty much a 7), just like you said, but not necessarily anything special. A 7 (IMO) is worth seeing but anything under that is not. Basically, it's the lowest grade I'd give to a movie that's not crap.

And I apologize if any of this is incoherent. It's almost 6:00 AM and I'm falling asleep at the keyboa...

I can't believe we're debating what "meh" means.

It's a 7.

Here is how to say "meh" in lots of languages. HAVE FUN

Finnish: pah
French: bof
German: mh
Italian: boh      Russian: ну (nu)
Slovene: eh
Spanish: bah
Swedish: bla


The Swedish translation proves it can't be a 7.

There's also the Dutch "Mwoh."

This is why I perfer the "Out of 5" system to the "Out of 10" system.

The out of 10 system is too close to the out of 100 system, which is confused for the scholastic system of "% of completion". If the kid is correct 70% of the time, then he is at the midpoint for all children getting things correct (apparently). A kid scoring 70, would be rated a 5 out of 10.

But all that confusion is cleared up with an "Out of 5" system. For instance, a "meh" is going to be a 3/5 no matter which way you cut it.

Yeah, but then you have less flexibility. If a movie is better than 3 but not quite a 4, you have to make a tough call and either over or underrate it. And if you start introducing decimals, then it becomes the same thing as an "out of 10" scale.

I like this discussion. Quite interesting.

Let's talk about the film instead.

I loved it. It was well written (though most of the credit goes to the original play) and
well played. I actually saw the older movie just before this one (I suddenly got interested)
and I think Burton did well.

Helena Carter and Depp portrayed the characters rather well (but I'm a sucker for Carters
more eccentric characters so I'm probably biased), and I must say I didn't expect Cohen to
pull off the character of Pirelli half as well as he did.

I absolutely hated Joanna in this movie, but I don't think that was Wiseners fault; The
script didn't really put as much emphasis on her as it should have. Finally, Alan Rickman
somehow disappointed me in this movie. I've always been a fan, but I don't think he put
as much personality in his character as he normally does. A little bit of Snape might have
suited him more.

EDIT:

Thinking about it, I'm not grading this movie. Fuck the argument.