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On the official forum, the devs explained how the rating for level completion is calculated. I copy paste below:

Hello everybody, here is how the star system currently works:

The color of the gems doesn't matter for the final count. Only the amount does.
Master gems add 10 gems to your count, but don't affect your score otherwise.
The amount of gems you collect gives you up to three stars. The thresholds vary from level to level and are determined by us counting and subjectively determining trivial and nontrivial gems. Trivial gems are on the main path and mainly serve to show the way; they are easy to collect. Nontrivial gems either require some risk or skill to reach, or are hidden and require you to spot the hints. Note that trivial and nontrivial gems aren't flagged - they are simply gem amounts.
Collecting an amount of gems equal to 90% of the amount of trivial gems in a level awards one star.
Collecting an amount of gems equal to 100% of the amount of trivial gems plus 35% of the amount of nontrivial gems awards two stars.
Collecting an amount of gems equal to 100% of the amount of trivial gems plus 70% of the amount of nontrivial gems awards three stars.
Depending on gem quantity and distribution, this roughly requires you to collect between 20% and 55% of the total gems in a level for one star, between 50% and 75% of the gems for two stars, and between 75% and 90% of the gems for three stars. Basically, the easier the gems are to collect in a level, the more you need to collect for a higher rating.
Keeping your death count low awards up to two stars.
If you die between 6 and 20 times, you get one star.
If you die between 0 and 5 times, you get two stars.
Dying does not affect the amount of stars you gain for collecting gems.
You need an average of 3 stars per non-boss level to unlock a boss level. This does not carry over between worlds.
You don't need to reach three stars in each level. If you five-star a level, you can one-star another.
This average will be lowered to 2.5 stars per level (rounded down) in the next patch so that you don't need to collect gems like crazy if you die a lot.
Purple stars are awarded in boss levels. They serve to unlock hardcore mode and don't influence the star count in the next world.
The thresholds are a little more generous since the last patch (e.g. it used to be up to 3 and 10 deaths instead of 5 and 20), so you may have observed different results if you experimented before the patch.
Speaking of which, is there anything to unlock by 5 star-ing all levels ?
Not really. On Steam there may be an achievement *shrug*
In reality there is only the warm and fuzzy feeling that you did it.

BFG have gotten quite some feedback about the game being too hard, so I doubt that they'll add a reward in the future for something that some people are getting very upset about.
If people are upset that 5staring is too hard when it doesn't give anything, imagine how they'll react if it does ;)

The things to unlock are:
Gallery pictures by gathering the big crystals in the levels.
Time and Score modes by beating the level in adventure.
Hardcore Mode by beating the complete adventure mode.
Uber Hardcore by beating the game in Hardcore mode.
Yeah I kinda guessed there wasn't anything to unlock but some useless achievement, but I wanted to be sure. No need to bother then.

The game can be quite difficult yes, but that's not the main issue I have with it, it's the infinite lives instead. I'd rather have an old-school system where you have like a limited number of lives, each life grating 3 life points or so, that you could replenish by 1 when you collect X00 gems. Infinites lives just make the game completely unrewarding for me, no matter how many times I fail this jump, I know that's it's no big deal as I can retry as much as I want, I don't have to be careful or anything.

But that would piss even more people off.
So you should be looking forward to Hardcore mode. Each level 1 life :)
But you have to go through the whole game first. And 1 life is probably TOO hardcore. It's either that or infinite lives, nothing in-between...
Yeah, Hardcore is the inbetween :/
Uber Hardcore I know I'll probably never even attempt.
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charbon: But you have to go through the whole game first. And 1 life is probably TOO hardcore. It's either that or infinite lives, nothing in-between...
Someone posted an uber-hardcore playthrough...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ-FyCouB0s&feature=g-hist

I am so never going to be able to do that.