The gulf between critics and audience has never been wider – just look at Melania’s Rotten Tomatoes score
Critics have given the Flotus flick 11% on the aggregator site, but the ‘verified ticket buyers’ score is a near perfect 98%. A campaign by activists, or a sign of...
By Stuart Heritage · The Guardian Culture
Critics have given the Flotus flick 11% on the aggregator site, but the ‘verified ticket buyers’ score is a near perfect 98%. A campaign by activists, or a sign of our politically disparate times? If you’ve started to feel like you’re living in an entirely different reality from most of the world, there’s a good chance that it’s because you’ve been looking at the Rotten Tomatoes page for the Melania Trump documentary . There you will find two diametrically opposed numbers. First is the official Rotten Tomatoes score – the one aggregated across published reviews by professional critics – which sits at a minuscule 11%. But then there is the audience rating, which is based on scores from members of the general public. That score, incredibly, is 98%. (Admittedly, this is a score confined to “verified ticket buyers” – Rotten Tomatoes has another section it calls “All Audience” where the reaction is more … mixed.) Of course, there has long been a chasm between public and critical opinion, which is why the film that won the most Oscars last year was a small character study about a disenfranchised stripper and the film that brought in the most money was about Minecraft. Even so, the disparity between the brutal reviews that Melania received (“The most depressing experience I have ever had in the cinema” – Mark Kermode) and the glowing public reviews (“Every red blooded American needs to see this movie to recognise the grace, sophistication and power of Flotius [sic]” – Jackie) is enough to give you whiplash. Continue reading...