Stars converge in cable TV guide ratings conspiracy

I first noticed the strange phenomenon while watching late night television by my local cable TV company, Comcast.

I started surfing through the movies section to find something I might like to watch.

I came across "The Good Shepherd," a spy thriller starring Matt Damon. I had already seen it in theaters, of course. When I hit the "Information" button on my Comcast remote, a blurb popped up.

It said: "This stylish, moody and absorbing spy thriller goes behind the scenes for a peek at the cloak and dagger days of the CIA."

Man, that sounds good, doesn't it? Then I saw the star rating attached to the blurb: Two stars. Two measly stars out of four.

How exactly stylish, moody and absorbing can a spy thriller be if it only earned a lowly two-star rating? That's hardly a ringing critical endorsement.

I went on with my random search for a suitable movie.

I came to 2007's vigilante thriller "The Brave One." I punched the information button and read this: "Academy Award winner Jodie Foster gives a searing performance in this powerful thriller."

What does this "powerful thriller" with a "searing performance" by Jodie Foster rate?

Two stars.

If a "powerful" and "searing" movie rates a mere two stars, what kind of superlatives exist to describe one rated a full four stars?

Next up: "The Mummy." Again, I punched the information button. A blurb came up. It said: "Brendan Fraser is a raider of the lost sarcophagus in this rousing high-tech remake of the 1932 horror classic."

Rousing high-tech remake? That's sounds promising.

Wait!

"The Mummy" earned a lowly two stars, too. How exactly rousing can a mere two-star movie be? Wouldn't a genuinely rousing movie at least earn three stars?

I quickly found the 2005 remake of the horror movie "The Fog." The blurb read: "John Carpenter's 1980 chiller about vengeful spirits terrorizing a remote coastal town gets a scary new update."

How scary?

One star.

In my world, a horror movie earns one star when it isn't scary. If it's scary, it should rate higher, don't you think?

At this point, I began to wonder just who wrote these capsule descriptions.

Did one person create the verbal part and another person supply the star rating? That might explain the huge discrepancy between the glowing prose and the unimpressive star ratings.

Or did the blurb writer receive instructions to pump up the copy on the movie descriptions so they sounded way better than they really were?

Then, maybe the writer's conscience forced him/her to be completely honest with the star ratings.

Did the writer of these blurbs even see the movies?

I called my friendly neighborhood Comcast help line and found Rich Ruggiero, vice-president of communications and public affairs.

"Comcast has nothing to do with creating that information," he told me. "Individual networks supply those programming notes."

In other words, HBO supplies blurbs for its movies. TMC and Showtime and the Syfy channel supply their own? Yes.

Yikes! This conspiracy of inconsistency was bigger than I imagined.

I checked and discovered that HBO and Showtime don't use superlatives in their capsule descriptions, or even use star ratings on their websites. Neither do the websites of Syfy or Turner Classic Movies.

Meanwhile, if you come across the blurb for the 2004 drama "Twisted," and it says, "Ashley Judd is riveting in this atmospheric thriller," don't assume that the star rating will reflect either the "atmospheric" part or the "riveting" part.

It gets one star from the stingy half of the split-personality writer.

As for Adam Sandler and Kevin James making "a hilarious couple" in the "riotous farce" titled "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," the stars tell the real truth: two stars.