The parent company of movie review site Rotten Tomatoes has been forced to deny critic-shamed Melania was declared a fan favorite by an army of MAGA bots.
Versant, the TV group which owns Rotten Tomatoes and MS NOW, had to speak out after a series of claims that the documentary’s record-breaking disparity between fan and critic reception was because of its site being manipulated.
Fans of Melania gave the documentary a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Popcornmeter,” despite it being widely panned by critics, who scored the film at 6% on its “Tomatometer” and called it “exhaustingly boring” and “pure, endless hell.”
Rolling Stone reported on Thursday that the difference between the two scores is the largest ever recorded in the platform’s history, leading to speculation that internet bots are behind the fan scores.
Disinformation watchdog Debunk.org told Newsweek there was “something suspicious” in the fan reviews of the film on Rotten Tomatoes. “The Debunk, org team has reviewed over 220 comments on the Rotten Tomatoes website. Less than five reviews were negative compared to all other reviews of five stars. Ninety-seven percent were positive, which is statistically impossible to achieve,” the organization’s statement explained.
“All reviews are presented as verified (tickets purchased over Fandango), but all accounts seem to have only a single review, which is odd, because citizens who love movies tend to be heavier review writers as well. Most reviews appeared two days ago (63%),” they wrote Wednesday, “which also looks inauthentic.”
Bolstering suspicion of foul play on Rotten Tomatoes is speculation about how Melania achieved its box office number in its opening weekend. A Substack post from box-office expert and former IndieWire Editor Tom Brueggemann notes that the film’s $7 million opening smacked of “fake ticket sales” to boost the numbers. According to MeidasTouch News, emails sent from the National Faith Advisory Board, led by Trump’s Senior Advisor of the White House Faith Office, Paula White-Cain, encouraged supporters to bulk buy tickets on a special portal to “support our first lady.”
Finally, on Friday, Versant told Variety in a statement, “There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the Melania documentary. Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Versant, which declined to comment further on the record.
IMDb also flagged “unusual activity” on Melania’s IMDb page, which now displays the disclaimer, “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title.” Any IMDb user can score a title on the platform, where Melania is currently rated 1.3 stars out of 10.
MAGA-friendly billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos spent $40 million for the film’s rights—and another $35 million to promote it, in a move critics have called a sycophantic kiss of Trump’s ring. Melania opened last weekend in roughly 1,500–1,778 theatres nationwide, and according to Business Insider, will expand to 300 more theaters after performing better than expected.
Anti-Trumpers complicated the film’s expensive marketing strategy ahead of the premiere by repeatedly vandalizing ads across the country.
