Hollywood is still in denial that “Melania,” a documentary about first lady Melania Trump and wife of President Donald Trump, is outperforming expectations, floating conspiracy theories that include claims the film’s positive audience reviews are fake. But the owner of Rotten Tomatoes says those glowing fan responses are 100% real.
“There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the ‘Melania’ documentary,” Versant, the parent company of the popular review aggregator, said in a statement to Variety. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
“Melania” currently has one of the largest disparities between critics’ and audience scores on the site, with reviewers giving the film a 7% rating and moviegoers giving it a 99% rating. About 75% of the audience was women aged 55 and older.
Avowed leftist late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is one of Hollywood’s most perplexed, as he mentioned during his monologue on Wednesday.
“As of tonight, Melania has a score of 5% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics. That is very low. To put that in perspective, that is 1% lower than ‘Gigli.’ The audience score for ‘Melania’ is 99% positive, which is 1% higher than ‘The Godfather.’ And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with that at all,” he said.
