When Netflix Recommendations Go Wrong

John writes, "I thought you might enjoy this crazy movie recommendation I got today (see the attached screenshot), which seems to indicate that fans of the despair and violence of The Wire and the lacerating misanthropy of Curb Your Enthusiasm will also enjoy an animated show for 3-year-olds."

Have you experienced any strange Netflix recommendations?

Comments

[Jeremy]

I get these all the time. It's probably due to the fact that I've got a bunch of kids stuff in my instant and rental queues and I rate it based on whether or not I can stand to watch it more than once. BTW - My kids LOVE Pocoyo.

[McNulty]

Um, that Pocoyo is pretty fucked actually. He's always capping his friends and starting drug wars. The Netflix engine is right on.

[banter]

^ lol

[David Grenier]

I always get Netflix telling me that I would love Bollywood movies because I rented some John Woo classics. Cuz, you know, all of Asia is the same.

[banter]

You know what…someone from the wire must do voices for that cartoon…that has to be it.

[jeff]

You do realize that netflix does not do it's recommendations like pandora, judging the content and trying to tell you what you'd like.

It's much more like last.fm in that it's a social algorithm. Other people who watched those also got Pocoyo. It looks like there are a lot of young-ish parents who like curb your enthusiasm, the wire, and have kids.

It's not completely random or wrong, you just have to click on the "not interested" so netflix knows. It's an algorithm, not a movie critic.

[Pollardito]

That same movie showed up on my recommendations a while back. Netflix thought I'd like it because I liked these:

Talk to Me
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 3
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5
The Mission: Special Edition

It must be the case that a lot of people that like those movies have [asian] children, because I definitely do not have kids

[ZeroCorpse]

I wouldn't call my recommendations "strange", but I do wish they'd break down some categories a bit more.

For example, I'm a fan of animation, but hate anime. I prefer western animation. The problem is that if I rent animated movies from Netflix (like Futurama), they assume that means I'm also an otaku and they start suggestion all the anime titles that I will never watch, because, as I said earlier, I absolutely hate anime. (And before someone tries to convert me: I watched it in the 80s and 90s. I outgrew it and got bored with it.)

I would love it if they'd put anime in its own category, and leave western animation out of it. Right now, they just have "kids animation" and "adult animation" as general suggestion categories, and that simply doesn't fit my needs.

I'm sure some of the anime fans would like to not get suggestions for Ralph Bakshi's or Mike Judge's stuff in with their anime, too.

It's a nitpick, but it does make it hard to get decent recommendations, and "Not Interested" never seems to work to stop the anime suggestions.

[saucybetty]

Netflix has never really been great at making recommendations for me. I can't imagine why as I have over 3,000 movies rated. I wrote about this a while back. http://saucybetty.blogspot.com/2008/05/netflix-recommendations-trip-down.html#links

I gave Unzipped, the documentary about fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi five stars...therefore according to Netflix, I would give some SpongeBob movie 4.6 stars.

[Just Another User]

It is surprising to me that the Netflix star recommendations appearing beneath each movie thumbnail are their best guess for what I'll like, not the overall viewer average. Who thought this was a good idea?

[Jess]

I got Pocoyo too. Could this be like, a payola deal? I have no clue why I would get that suggestion and I tend to hate and shy away from all animation. Like, I didn't even rent Persepolis recently or anything.