IMDb has officially given Disney’s Snow White a review disclaimer after a slew of 1-star reviews tanked the movie’s rating. The live-action movie is a remake of the classic 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As in the case of most of Disney’s live-action adaptations, Snow White received significant backlash before the movie even came out. Now, the movie has at least partially overcome this negativity, opening to a respectable $42.2 million domestically and boasting a $142.7 million gross worldwide at the time of writing.
In response to this review bombing, IMDb has officially put a disclaimer atop Snow White‘s rating. When clicking on more information about the movie’s score, which currently has a 1.5 star out of 10-star average, one can now see a pop-up box that says “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this тιтle.“ The user ratings below display that 91.4% of those who rated it gave the movie a 1-star review.
What This Means For Snow White
These IMDb Ratings Do Not Reflect The Film’s Overall Reception
It is important to understand that Snow White‘s reviews overall are not as bad as what IMDb currently reflects. Critics scores have amounted in a 40% Tomatometer for the film. ScreenRant‘s Rachel Labonte gave the movie 5 out of 10 stars, taking issue with the film’s “artificial sheen” while praising Zegler’s performance. The Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews are actually positive overall, with 74% of audiences giving the movie a favorable rating. The IMDb score may look bad, but it does not tell the full story.
The inconsistency in scores across different aggregate sites is part of why IMDb likely decided to give their disclaimer. The sheer volume of 1-star reviews is a sign of review bombing, where large numbers of people take to the internet to offer extremely negative feedback or scores, often with the purpose of harming sales. While there are multiple factors that may have contributed to this review bombing, controversy surrounding leads Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot may have contributed to this phenomenon.
Our Take On The Snow White Review Bombing
Review Bombing Has Gotten Common
The review bombing trend has become common in circumstances where many audiences have an ideological disagreement with certain shows or movies. This was the case for two episodes of The Last of Us season 1, which received review bombing largely from trolls who took issue with the show’s portrayal of LGBTQ+ individuals. In the case of Snow White, people have taken issue with both Zegler and Gadot for their strong pro-Palestine and pro-Israel stances, respectively. As such, Snow White‘s rating is less an indication of merit, but moreso a reflection of the political controversies it has evoked.
Source: IMDb
