We’ve all seen those movie rating systems with stars, thumbs up, and even rotten tomatoes.

The TAMMS (The ACT Matrix Move Scale) is a new twist on that old theme. Regardless of the number of stars, thumbs or rotten tomatoes a movie receives elsewhere, I thought it might be useful to rate movies according to TAMMS.

The new movie “Frozen” seems a good one to start with. Let me explain…

“A Beautiful Mind” is considered the top “ACT Consistent” movie as the main character first struggles with a very troubled (labeled schizophrenia) mind and ultimately learns how to have that mind and move toward meaningful living.

The matrix diagram for the main character would look something like the diagram above.

Looking at the diagram you can see the four elements that go into the TAMMS:

1) How does the movie do at showing who and what’s important to the character?

2) How “badass” are the character’s internal “demons” (I use ‘demons’ for movie lingo, not a clinical term.)

3) How well does the movie present unworkable “away” moves from the internal demons.

4) How well does the movie show “The Transformation!” That is, the character goes from unworkably struggling like heck with the internal demon(s) to Having the demon(s) AND doing Committed actions. (The diagonal line.)

If a movie does great in all four categories, then it gets five TAMMS stars (or maybe little matrixes).

For a 5-matrix TAMMS benchmark, we will use “A Beautiful Mind.”

We were working on TAMMS today in one of my programs and we realized that we also needed a movie that almost everyone would give a low TAMMS.

The “winner” was “Honey I Shrunk the Kids.” As a group we rated it at .25 matrix. (I bet you can come up with movies that score even lower TAMMS.)

If TAMMS becomes popular, then I will get clickable stars (or matrixes) that we can use to rate movies. For now you can post a response to this post and I will compile the results.

So how many TAMMS stars (or matrixes) would you give “Frozen”? Post your answer below. If you want to write a review, that’s great, just try and stick with the four TAMMS elements.

Also, if you would be so kind as to give TAMMS ratings to other movies you have seen (old or new), that would be great! We might end up with a database.

Be well,

Kevin