We still haven’t met a critic who would call Michael Bay their favorite filmmaker (though famously contrarian critic Armond White has come close, calling him a “real visionary”). Bay is considered by most professional movie watchers a maker of a kind of anti-cinema, a man with little feel for narrative and humanity but a whole lot of eye for tits and ass and big ’splosions. His credits run green with Rottenness—Nic Cage action flick The Rock is his single Fresh film as a director—and yet people love his work (real people, that is, not those dark-dwelling critics). His recent string of Transformers films has pulverized the global box office, and his 1990s output includes some of the decade’s most cherished movies (Armageddon!). When it comes to Michael Bay, the people have spoken—and they’ve drowned out the critics. The director’s buddy-cop classic, Bad Boys, is among the films celebrated in this chapter, which is devoted to movies that made serious bank at the box office, despite Rotten reviews, and that have become audience favorites over the years. They’re the movies that still have people screaming for sequels (Space Jam, The First Wives Club), that play perennially on cable (The ’Burbs, The Holiday), and movies about which our dear readers write frequently to us to ask, How the f—k can that be Rotten? (Twins, Teen Wolf). Sometimes, they demand we simply let go and enjoy the populist ride—and sometimes they’re more complex than meets the eye, as critic Monica Castillo argues of Disney blockbuster Maleficent. This is decidedly not the case with Bad Boys, but hey, that’s part of why we love it.