Our great national political divide has come to Rotten Tomatoes.<\/p>\n
The critics\u2019 score for Melania is an abysmal 6 percent.<\/p>\n
More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n
The documentary\u2019s audience score is an incredible 99 percent.<\/p>\n
This is the biggest critics vs. audience split in the movie review site\u2019s history, confirmed a site\u2019s spokesperson.<\/p>\n
And Rotten Tomatoes says those audience numbers are, in fact, very real: \u201cThere has been NO manipulation on the audience reviews for the Melania documentary,\u201d the company has said in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cReviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film through Fandango.\u201d<\/p>\n
And certainly nobody has doubted the validity of the critics\u2019 score. Many of the scathing reviews (a generous sample of them here<\/a>) sound like the reviewer attended the screening at gunpoint. The trio of positive reviews that have kept its score above zero were from publications known for having a right-wing tilt (The Epoch Times, The London Evening Standard and The Spectator). To be fair, many of the outlets that left negative reviews are often accused of having a liberal bias by those on the political right.<\/p>\n In a way, that 99 percent number is not surprising. One presumably has to be a greater-than-casual MAGA fan to go to a theater to watch a documentary about the sphinx-like first lady. So the audience is pretty self selecting.<\/p>\n Since we previously showcased many of the critical barbs thrown at the film, it seems only fair to post a couple of the audience reactions from RT: \u201cThere\u2019s no propaganda, just lots of insight into the planning and execution of the parties and events,\u201d wrote one. \u201cI was surprised at how involved the incoming First Lady is. And I was amazed at the programs and work Melania has done over the past 8 years. There are some glimpses at her personal life as well. A truly classy woman with an amazing sense of style, grace and elegance.\u201d And another: \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect, but Id never seen in a documentary about the White House this angle and I found it fascinating! I was really drawn into it about 15 minutes in and when the movie ended, everyone in the entire theater was applauding, including myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Melania has been a clear success<\/a> at the box office. The film\u2019s $8 million opening weekend was the best showing in a decade for a documentary film.<\/p>\n Melania also recently made headlines in a new way when distributor Amazon MGM asked a theater in Oregon to stop screening the film due to some viral jokes on its marquee<\/a>.<\/p>\n Previously, the first lady and Brett Ratner discussed with THR the making of the film<\/a>, with the controversial filmmaker denying speculation he made Melania as a way to get his career back. That\u2019s ridiculous,\u201d he said. \u201cIf anything, this was a bigger risk because of the polarization and subject matter. I didn\u2019t do this to get me back into Hollywood. That wasn\u2019t my strategy. I\u2019ve been waiting to make\u00a0Rush Hour 4\u00a0\u2014 that was my strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our great national political divide has come to Rotten Tomatoes. The critics\u2019 score for Melania is an abysmal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,29713,111,139,69,4980,82682],"class_list":{"0":"post-271485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-melania","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-rotten-tomatoes","15":"tag-the-hollywood-reporter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}