Gotti

About

Gotti is the 2018 American biographical crime film about the life of New York City mobster John Gotti. The film received very negative critic reviews and generally negative user reviews, which has been the subject of discussions on Reddit, Twitter and other online platforms. Starting in February 2019, the film gained ironic popularity and appeared in memes in the /r/moviescirclejerk subreddit and other online communities.

History

In September 2010, independent film production company Fiore Films secured rights for a biographical film about the life of Gambino crime family leader John Gotti and his son, John "Junior" Gotti.^[1] On March 30th, 2011, John Travolta was announced to portray John Gotti in the film.^[2] The film subsequently spent several years in development hell, actors Al Pacino, Lindsay Lohan, Ben Foster and Joe Pesci attached at different points.^[3]

On September 8, 2015, director Kevin Connolly was announced as director.^[4] On September 26th, 2017, the first trailer for the film was released, gaining over 1.6 million views in two years.^[5] On May 6th, 2018, a reedited version of the trailer was released, gaining over 2 million views in one year (shown below).^[6]

On June 15th, 2018, Gotti premiered in the United States.

Reception

The film received very negative critic reviews and generally negative user reviews. As of June 4th, 2019, Gotti maintained a zero percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes film review aggregator with 54 reviews.^[7] On Metacritic, the film maintained a 24 percent critic rating with 16 reviews.^[8]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film had a 47 percent audience score with 7,980 reviews as of June 4th, 2019^[7]. On Metacritic, the film maintained a 4.5 user score.^[8]

At 39th Golden Raspberry Awards, Gotti received a total of six nominations, including Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Actor.^[11]

User Review Manipulation Allegations

On June 19th, Redditor wunder_3 made a post in which they provided circumstantial evidence that Gotti user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes could have been manipulated in order to be used in the film's marketing strategy. The post gained over 23,600 views.^[9]

The post revealed that 45 out of 58 early reviewers of the film on Rotten Tomatoes had created their accounts in June 2019, with 32 out of 45 reviewing Gotti exclusively. As a result, the film maintained a 77 percent audience score as of June 18th, 2018. On the same day, the official Twitter account for the film made a post in which they claimed that "audiences loved Gotti" and that critics "put out a hit" on the film.^[10]

Fandom

On February 13th, 2019, Redditor KevinSpaceysGarage posted a meme referencing hypothetical sequel Gotti 2 in /r/moviescirclejerk subreddit (shown below, left).^[12] The post received over 2,300 upvotes in four months. On February 19th, Redditor KevinSpaceysGarage made a post which gained 320 upvotes in four months (shown below, right).^[13]

In the following months, multiple memes in which Gotti was presented as a cinematic masterpiece were posted to /r/moviescirclejerk subreddit (examples shown below). On June 2nd, 2019, posts referencing the film were banned in the community.^[14]

Search Interest

External References