Gotti, the biopic of the late New York crime figure John Gotti starring John Travolta, has bottomed out with a 0% score on critical aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. As of press time, 22 critics have posted reviews through the site, all of whom noted that they would not recommend the film.
Conversely, the film earned an 80% Audience rating on the site.
Travolta stars as the New York mobster who rose to fame in the 1980s as the visible head of the Gambino crime family, whose ability to avoid prosecution for his various crimes earned him the nickname “the Teflon Don.” Travolta’s real-life wife Kelly Preston also stars in the film as Gotti’s wife Victoria Gotti.
Rotten Tomatoes scores are determined by registered critics noting if they would or wouldn’t recommend the film, with the ratio between the becoming the site’s “Tomato score.” Films with scores over 60% are considered “Fresh” by the site, films below that threshold are considered “Rotten.” Founded in 1998, scores for older movies on Rotten Tomatoes are usually derived from newer reviews published long after the films’ initial theatrical runs.
This is not the first Travolta film to achieve a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. His films Staying Alive (1983), Look Who’s Talking Now (1993) and Life On The Line (2016) bottomed out with the critics. Even the often derided Battlefield Earth (2000) scored a three percent.
Gotti had a somewhat troubled journey to the screen. Originally a Lionsgate film, the studio sold it back to the producers in December just two weeks before it was scheduled to hit theaters. Vertical Entertainment and MoviePass Ventures then stepped up to the plate to get the film into a limited release this weekend on 503 screens. It is the second film to be distributed by the subsidiary of MoviePass, the theatrical ticket subscription service, following the recent release of American Animals.
Opening with a Friday gross of $614,000, Gotti is expected to bring in a potential $1.8 million this weekend.
