Katie Miller unleashed on Hollywood’s “woke trash” after Rotten Tomatoes verified that real audiences—not bots—gave “Melania” glowing reviews despite critics savaging the film.
The MAGA WAG took to X to dunk on the left following reports that the first lady’s 99% Popcornmeter rating, which aggregates audience reviews, was authentic. Melania has the largest critic-audience disparity on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critic-powered Tomatometer sitting at an abysmal 8%.
“Every movie is woke trash because Hollywood still doesn’t understand the American people,” Miller wrote on Sunday morning. “The stark contrast between what Americans want vs what Hollywood thinks couldn’t be more vast.”
Miller took this difference as evidence that Americans want more movies like Melania, which follows the first lady during the 20 days before her husband’s second inauguration.
However, early box office data show that the film’s audience reflects a particular type of consumer. The documentary attracted primarily older white women, with audience demographics being 75 percent white, 70 percent women, and 72 percent aged 55 and over, per NPR.
Melania performed better than expected in its opening weekend, earning just over $7 million, which is significant for a documentary of its kind. Still, it has a long way to go to recoup the $75 million that Amazon-MGM Studios spent on it.
It doesn’t help that the film has been plagued by bad reviews and suspicion over phony ticket sales. Versant, the parent company of Rotten Tomatoes, insisted that the audience members who left a review on its site were real ticketbuyers.
“There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the Melania documentary,” the company told Variety. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
This doesn’t mean that everybody who purchased a ticket actually saw the film. Industry experts raised concerns over potential bulk buying to bolster Melania sales, with those tickets being distributed to “senior citizen homes, Republican activists, other interested parties for free to help boost audiences.” One viral Craigslist ad in Boston promoted free tickets and a payout of $50 to get people to watch the movie. With these methods, it’s hard to tell who actually saw the film and who simply had a ticket.
To add to the uncertainty, a report from Business Insider found that military personnel were forced to buy Melania tickets. Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said that “people are scared” by the command.
“They were pressured to see the movie,” he said. “Your military superior, that’s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.”
Critics panned the film as a shallow vanity project that served as propaganda. The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon said Melania was “so expected and utterly pointless.”
Meanwhile, crew members on the movie tried to scrub their names from the project and wished for it to “flop.”
