The new “Melania” documentary now boasts the largest Rotten Tomatoes disparity between critical and audience reviews in the history of the website.
The doc earned the distinction Wednesday night as the pricey portrait of the First Lady’s days before Donald Trump’s second presidential term heads into its second weekend at the box office. Critical reception has “Melania” sitting at 5% on the Tomatometer while the Audience Popcornmeter has it way up at 99%. Versant – the company behind Rotten Tomatoes – released a statement that there has been no tampering with voting that caused the massive gap.
“There has been NO bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the ‘Melania’ documentary,” the statement read. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
To put the high Audience meter number into perspective, “The Shawshank Redemption” — beloved by most and considered by many to be one of the best movies ever made — has a 98% on the Popcornmeter.
Many assumed the film would get the opposite of a review bombing upon release. Amazon put a lot behind the Brett Ratner-directed documentary. It boasted a $40 million price tag to make and another $35 million tacked on for additional marketing. With all of that money behind it, the filmed pulled in around $7 million in its opening weekend at the box office.
This is not the only example of user-submitted reviews and ratings that have seen an influx of focus directed toward the documentary. IMDb has had more than 44,000 ratings submitted for “Melania.” The number got to the point that a message at the top of the page reads: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title.”
For TheWrap, William Bibbiani thought he “took one for the team” having to suffer through the film.
“Brett Ratner’s tasteless, tedious, criminally shallow propaganda puff piece ‘Melania‘ is nearly two hours of self-congratulatory torture,” he wrote. “The film records the 20-day build-up to Donald Trump’s second inauguration from the perspective of First Lady Melania Trump, and I have no idea why she was okay with this movie being released, because Brett Ratner couldn’t find the humanity in a funeral.”
