Gotti, a new film which stars John Travolta as the titular mobster, isn't doing very well with critics. However, rather than take it lying down, the movie is firing back at the critics. A new ad for the film that has gone online is pointing out that audiences have had a much more positive reaction to Gotti than the critics have, and it asks moviegoers to see the film and judge for themselves, rather than trust people the ad calls trolls. Check it out.
The language is a bit harsh, but it certainly fits when you're talking about a movie about one of the most notorious mobsters who ever lived. Gotti stars John Travolta as the "Teflon Don" John Gotti, who ran the Gambino Crime Family in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's certainly a story that seems fit for a great movie. However, thus far critics haven't agreed this is one, as every review currently posted to the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes is negative. However, the ad is correct that audiences have been more receptive to the film, as the audience score on the same site is 76% positive.
It's not uncommon for audiences and critics to have diverging views about a film, and certainly, no movie likes to see bad reviews. However, this situation has been taken one step further as Gotti is calling out critics and referring to those who have given the movie a bad review as trolls. Clearly, the movie is afraid that the negative reviews will hamper its ability to make money, and the feeling is that calling out the critics will do more good than doing what most movies do, which is ignore them.
Of course, it should be pointed out that, while the fact that 100% of the reviews are bad certainly isn't something to be excited about, Gotti currently only has 25 reviews listed on the site. Nearly every other movie that was released on Friday has four times that many, so the simple fact is that most critics haven't even seen the film, and the ad is picking a fight with a fairly small number of critics.
Of course, people absolutely should judge for themselves whether or not the movie is any good. While many filmmakers have taken issue with sites like Rotten Tomatoes and believe it has a negative impact on the industry, it's hard to say that a lot of people actually avoid certain films based on the response of critics as a whole or any individual reviews.
Art is subjective and every person is going to react to it differently. Reviews can be valuable to some as it can give viewers a snapshot of a film that might help them decide if it's the sort of thing they might like. Reviews can also help viewers consider specific aspects of a movie in ways they might otherwise not, but they're not actually objective measures of a film's quality, just a subjective view of each individual person. If they were, critics, and most everybody else, would always agree on whether or not a movie is good, and they don't. See Gotti for yourself in theaters now.
