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One of LiveBetsDirect’s favorite websites out there on the interwebs? Why, Rotten Tomatoes, of course!

While the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and such are nice (especially to wager on), the awards given at these celebrated events are more about Hollywood’s and film critic land’s, respectively, acceptance of the movies in question. These decisions don’t always sit well with the public, however, unless you’ve got the box office champ also becoming the big Oscar-sweeper. (Hello, Titanic…)

RottenTomatoes.com, by contrast, stands alone among high-profile cinema worshipers in its unique approach to rating movies. By simply compiling hundreds of opinions from professional film reviewers across the fame spectrum, the Tomatometer essentially seeks to derive an objective answer to the once-purely subjective question “Does [movie X] suck? And if so, how much?”

The Tomatometer happily also makes doable that sentiment heretofore only employed in trash-talking: “Wanna bet this movie’s gonna suck?”

That’s the question Bet365’s putting to you right now with its current proposition bet offer “Tomatometer reading for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I.”

The line looks like so:

Tomatometer reading of 83% or under: 20/23
Tomatometer reading of 83.1% or over: 20/23

Tomatometer scores for the Harry Potter series thus far, in chronological order, are as follows:

The Sorcerer’s Stone: 78%
The Chamber of Secrets: 82%
The Prisoner of Azkaban: 89%
The Goblet of Fire: 89%
The Order of the Phoenix: 78%
The Half-Blood Prince: 83%

What was that about objectivity? LBD may have to rethink that one slightly (It couldn’t be possible that i’m the one with bad taste, could it?), though in agreement with the majority of the above results. The numbers for “Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Goblet of Fire” should probably be switched, and the latter three flicks in the series don’t deserve nearly as much approbation as the Tomatoes are granting, but, hey: The ‘Meter has spoken.

Clever are the Bet365 bookmakers, too, for setting that 83% as the over/under. Even though the plan for “Deathly Hallows I” (i.e. present half of the last book in order to drag out profits via release of a second film) is insidious, the fact that the ‘Meter will give 83% to the slathering mess that was “Half-Blood Prince” shows that expectations are minimal for this series at this point.

If “Deathly Hallows I” goes at the pace of, say, Lord of the Rings III, the Tomatoes can’t possibly reach the magic 83%.

On the other hand, the above official trailer does make the film look pretty good and lit fans typically put the “Deathly Hallows” novel up among their favorites within the series. Add to this that “Deathly Hallows” will be director David Yates’ third turn behind the camera for Potter & Co. and the 16-month break given folks to forget “Half-Blood Prince” and it might be enough to push the seventh Harry Potter flick into the “over” in this proposition. And the inclusion herein of the yummy Helena Bonham Carter-as-Bellatrix Lestrange has got to be worth a few decimal points as well.

Take the over on the Bet365 prop and, until next time, we’ll see you at the bookie’s!