Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” is doing swimmingly at the box office — overcoming “review bombing” from audiences on IMDBand initial pushback over casting decisions.
“The Little Mermaid” has raked in more than $118 million at the U.S. box office and more than $197 million worldwide, earning it the position of fifth-best Memorial Day weekend opening in history, per Box Office Mojo.
Despite massive success at the box office, the remake of the 1989 animated movie was met with mixed reviews from critics. It was lauded for “great casting decisions” and “earnest cheer,” but critics also noted a lack of contrast between the original and remake.
“There is nothing innovative or reformist about what happens in this movie,” wrote HuffPost. “Certainly nothing that happens in it justifies its bewildering two hour, 15 minute runtime.”
The first teaser trailer for “The Little Mermaid” garnered backlash from viewers who were critical of Disney’s decision to cast Halle Bailey — a Black actress — as Ariel. In the face of initial pushback, the remake was largely praised for Bailey’s impressive performance.
“Halle Bailey is all the reason that any audience should need to justify Disney revisiting this classic,” wrote Variety.
‘The Little Mermaid’ fell victim to review bombing
“The Little Mermaid” may have fallen prey to review bombing — when internet trolls with multiple accounts post several negative reviews in attempts to harm the sales or popularity of a movie (or book, product, etc).
This week, IMDB issued a rare warning to viewers that it had altered its rating system to make up for “unusual voting activity.”
“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,” said the statement.
“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.”
AlloCiné, a French entertainment site, put out a similar statement and encouraged viewers to form their own opinions of the movie, rather than rely on online audience ratings.
“We are currently observing an unusual distribution of scores which demands the need for caution. We encourage you to make up your own mind about the film,” read the statement, per MovieWeb.
Twitter is praising ‘The Little Mermaid’
“The Little Mermaid” audiences are taking to Twitter to rave about the live-action remake.