Barbie’s Rotten Tomatoes Unverified Audience Score Begins to Rally Following Wave of Negative Review Bombing

Barbie suffered the now common bout of review-bombing from unverified Rotten Tomatoes audiences last week. This saw the film’s approval rating slump to 71% after riding high for its first several days on release. However, if the unverified reviews are removed, then the verified reviews fall pretty much in line with the approval rating of critics, currently sitting on an impressive 89%. Rotten Tomatoes has started splitting out verified and unverified reviews from audiences on some of the biggest releases to try and take away the power of the review bombing, whether for better or worse.

The dip in reviews, which were based on around 20,000 ratings logged at the time, clearly has not impacted the box office potential of the Greta Gerwig movie as it continues to bring in huge amounts around the world. Furthermore, it seems that more of those unverified reviews have started turning positive and pushed up the approval rating to 75% among them.

Barbie has subverted every expectation of what a movie about Mattel’s famous doll possibly could achieve and is fast on its way to becoming one of the biggest movies of the year after less than a week on release. Where it ends its run is yet to be seen, but if its hold over the box office continues as it has in the last few days, then it could well hit a billion within the next couple of weeks. While everyone waits to see whether Barbie can challenge The Super Mario Bros. Movie for the 2023 top spot, there are some who have not been as enamored with the film as others.

As with any movie that takes some kind of feminist stance, and is all-inclusive in the diversity stakes, Barbie has been hit with “woke” criticism from the right, and slammed as being “anti-men propaganda” by others. This is essentially the common thread among the large amount of 1-star reviews that have flooded in.

The harsh criticisms include, “I’m all for equality but this movie was not good. They made it sound like every man was a POS. It is a woken film!!!!! Had some of my fav actors in it and I will not watch another movie with them in it again. What a waste of money and time. Do not watch!!!” from one user. Another said, “Barbie proves just how important a good marketing team is. And by “good” I mean “deceptively misleading”.” A third said, “If you’re a man hater then this is the movie for you. What a waist[sic] of time to watch.”

Related: Barbie Box Office Batters Christopher Nolan Again By Beating Long-Standing Batman Record

Greta Gerwig Reacted to the “Passion” of Audiences

While there was always a good chance that Barbie would stir up controversy in certain circles, and director Greta Gerwig expressed her belief that the movie can help people look at some of the things in life that are perhaps not sitting where they should be. She said:

“Certainly, there’s a lot of passion. My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men. I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”

Barbie is already the biggest movie of the summer, even after less than a week on release having passed the total grosses of the likes of The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with ease. However big Barbie ends up becoming, the movie has certainly made its mark on 2023 and a wave of bad reviews is not going to change that.