The International Movie Database (IMDb) sensed something fishy with The Little Mermaid’s reviews and ratings.
While the Rob Marshall-directed movie made a splash at the US box office, earning nearly $118 million over the Memorial Day weekend since its May 26 release, it’s been drawing criticism from critics and audiences alike. Some of the complaints took issue with the CGI displayed in the live-action remake of the beloved 1989 animated movie for being confusing and aesthetically unappealing at times. Some viewers weren’t impressed with the new songs and the tweaks to some old ones.
But weighing and reworking genuine reviews isn’t IMDb’s business. What concerned the website were the scores of low ratings and poor reviews the movie was receiving—often by people who haven’t even watched it—because of certain prejudices.
“Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied,” read a note that appears on IMDb’s US, Canadian, UK, Brazilian and Mexican sites, as reported by MovieWeb. The biggest “unusual” reason for a barrage of low ratings likely stems from the racist backlash over the casting of Black singer Halle Bailey as Ariel in the live-action remake.
“Although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or ‘weight’) on the final rating. When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system,” IMDb explained. It did not elaborate on what the alternate method exactly is.
In the past, Marvel’s Eternals was review-bombed for including a gay character. The 2016 Ghostbusters was trolled on ratings sites for its all-female cast. And racists disliked that Peter Pan & Wendy had a South Asian actor playing the titular character and a Black actress portraying the fairy Tinkerbell, and made it known with their low-star reviews.
One big number: The Little Mermaid is loved on Rotten Tomatoes
95%: Rating on Rotten Tomatoes, from 5,000+ verified audience members polled
Charted: The Little Mermaid clocked the fifth-best Memorial Day weekend opening
Where else is The Little Mermaid being review-bombed
IMDb is not the only portal to have rolled out advisories on the review page for The Little Mermaid. They’re popping up around the world:
🇫🇷 “We are currently observing an unusual distribution of scores which demands the need for caution,” French movie ratings site, AlloCiné, warns in a banner on the The Little Mermaid page. “We encourage you to make up your own mind about the film.” At the time of publishing, the movie’s rating on AlloCiné was 2 out of 5, after 613 reviews.
🇩🇪 Moviepilot in Germany showed a rating of 0.7 out of 10 before The Little Mermaid release. It’s picked up drastically over the weekend, probably due to newer, genuine reviews coming in.
🇰🇷 In Korea, The Little Mermaid scored a paltry 1.96 on Naver on the day of release, with negative reviews getting hundreds of likes, and positive ones getting hundreds of thumbs down. By yesterday (May 29), the score on Naver was well over 6—much closer to the 75% score for the movie on the CGV Golden Egg Index, which targets actual visitors.
Related stories
✏️ Lin-Manuel Miranda is Disney’s new songwriter-in-chief
🎞 Disney’s CEO says the pandemic has permanently changed movie release strategies
👀 Disney’s Mulan is not the feminist Mulan Chinese girls recognize