Rotten Tomatoes Stands By 'Gotti' Audience Score Amid Skepticism
The new Gotti" has a rare 0 percent rating from 28 critics on Rotten Tomatoes. However, that's in stark contrast to the current Audience Score of 64 percent.
But some fans are questioning the validity of the Audience Score. For one, it's based on more than 7,000 ratings. That's a lot for a movie that opened to $1.7 million from just 503 theaters. As several people have pointed out, "Incredibles 2" only has a few more RT ratings, and it opened in 4,410 theaters and made more than $180 million in its opening weekend. In comparison, IMDb s gave "Gotti" a rating of 4.8/10, based on (as of this moment) 987 reviews.
So where did all of those RT reviews come from?
"Gotti" turned the fan vs. critic disparity into a marketing tool:
Audiences loved Gotti but critics don't want you to see it... The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself! pic.twitter.com/K6a9jAO4UH
— Gotti Film (@Gotti_Film) June 19, 2018
Movie was one of the financiers of "Gotti," and became involved in the debate on the RT ratings. (Full disclosure: Movie recently bought Moviefone.)
When one fan examined the "Gotti" RT reviews, here's what they claim they found:
"[O]f the first 58 reviewers with an available profile, 45 had created their on June 2018;
Out of these 45, 32 have only reviewed Gotti, 10 reviewed Gotti and another movie (7 times it was American Animals [another film owned by Movie]) and 3 had more than 3 reviews.
Of the remaining 13 s 8 looked normal and 5 had created their in December (TLJ?) so those were probably legit."
Gizmodo asked Rotten Tomatoes if any unusual activity was noticed in the "Gotti" ratings. Here's the spokesperson's response:
"We closely monitor our platforms and haven't determined there to be any problems. All of the reviews were left by active s."
Gizmodo also asked Movie for comment on the rumors it was involved in spiking the ratings; here's the response:
"The Movie marketing team is only engaged in sending promotional emails and push notifications to our s. We have no further involvement from a marketing perspective and have no insight or information about who is providing the audience reviews to Rotten Tomatoes."
It could be that John Travolta and his friends are doing their own marketing push. Could be a reaction to Rotten Tomatoes itself, from critics of the critics, who like to things that get trashed on RT.
"Gotti" would not be the first film to face a massive divide between critics and fans. Netflix's "Bright" was more diversity in film critics, to better reflect the movie-going public, because reviews can often make or break a project.
On Metacritic, "Gotti" has a Metascore of 24, with a Score of 4.4. That's from 7 positive and 8 negative reviews. No one is "Mixed."
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