The Little Mermaid has become a target of suspected review bombing online, and IMDb is taking action. Directed by Rob Marshall, The Little Mermaid is a live-action remake of Disney's 1989 animated film of the same name. The remake has been met with mixed but generally positive reviews from critics and has performed modestly well at the box office.
Now, however, Deadline reports that The Little Mermaid is experiencing what appears to be review bombing, particularly in countries like France, Germany, Korea, and elsewhere. In response to the suspicious distribution of reviews, IMDb has issued a warning saying “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.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact 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.
Before the film was even released, there was a significant backlash online against Bailey's Little Mermaid casting. Her casting, it was argued, is too much of a departure from the pale-skinned, red-haired Ariel in the original animated film. If Bailey's skin color and Disney's perceived "political correctness" is indeed the reason for the recent wave of review bombing, it's curious that the backlash is mostly concentrated in international markets and not in the U.S.
Historically, review bombing has been an effective way to bring down a film's overall rating on IMDb and other sites, ultimately making user reviews of films increasingly less meaningful as a metric for judging quality. Despite an overwhelming surge in one-star reviews, however, The Little Mermaid, as of this writing, has a rating of 7/10.