XPost: aus.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: NoBody@nowhere.com   
      
   'Melania' Is One Of The Five Worst-Reviewed Movies In IMDB History   
      
   ByPaul Tassi,   
      
   It was a wild weekend at the box office, with Sam Raimi's return to horror,   
   Send Help, just edging out a YouTuber's horror debut, Iron Lung, then in   
   third place, a controversial, self-title Melania Trump documentary. Melania   
   was projected to earn only $3-5 million, but with a $7 million haul, it's   
   one of the most successful documentaries in years. Amazon, however, paid   
   $40 million to acquire it and $35 million to market it to "success" is a   
   bit of a sliding scale. in context.   
      
   In terms of how it's been received, it's at two hyper-extreme ends of the   
   spectrum. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, critics have given it a 10% score, while   
   the audience? A 99% score. Melania has a conversely stunning 7/100 critic   
   score on Metacritic, with a 1.3/10 user score. Then, on the biggest movie   
   site, IMDB, user scores give it a 1.3 out of 10, which puts it in the   
   bottom five reviewed movies of all time on IMDB, out of hundreds of   
   thousands (730,00 movies by last count). Here is the bottom ten:   
      
   Daniel The Wizard – 1.2   
   Smolensk – 1.2   
   Melania – 1.3   
   Foodfight! – 1.3   
   Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas – 1.3   
   Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 – 1.5   
   Turks in Space – 1.5   
   The Cost of Deception – 1.5   
   Birdemic – Shock and Terror   
   Manos: The Hands of Fate   
      
   You have no doubt not heard of probably 80% of those, and Melania is easily   
   the highest profile film on the list. For now, anyway. It was a 1.1/10, the   
   all-time worst, about 24 hours ago, but it's inched up slightly.   
   Screenshot 2026-02-02 091724   
   Melania   
   IMDB   
      
   What's going on here? Well, two things:   
      
   IMDB and Metacritic do not require some sort of proof a user has seen the   
   movie in question when they score it. Not to say that Melania is not a bad   
   movie (critics seem pretty emphatic that it is), but these votes can also   
   be used as a protest metric against her and the administration.   
      
   Rotten Tomatoes, meanwhile, has a system where you can link a ticket   
   purchase to make your review "verified, " which is where that 99% score   
   comes from. 1) If you are someone who is interested enough in Melania Trump   
   to legitimately go out and see the Melania movie, you are probably going to   
   like it and score it high. 2) Reading through these often oddly articulate   
   reviews, it is easy to doubt the legitimacy of at least some of them, and   
   theoretically buying a handful of tickets to be able to post reviews to   
   boost the score is not something that would be terribly hard to do.   
      
   We'll see what Melania does in its second weekend, but it is likely to be a   
   movie that's frontloaded by fans of the First Lady and unlikely to boost   
   its earnings through word of mouth in future weeks. Though it has indeed   
   exceeded earnings expectations, critic and user scores aside. Stacked up   
   against what Amazon paid for it is a different story, however.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)