The Mother reaches unwanted Rotten Tomatoes milestone – despite Netflix opening weekend record

Film stars Jennifer Lopez as an assassin drawn out of hiding

Netflix’s latest No 1 film, The Mother, has arrived at a disappointing milestone on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite this, The Mother – which stars Jennifer Lopez as a retired assassin who comes out of hiding to save her estranged daughter (Lucy Paez) – has enjoyed the biggest opening weekend of 2023 so far for any Netflix film.

While Lopez has received praise for her performance in the film, The Mother has been middlingly received by critics and audiences alike, securing a critical score of just 45 per cent positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

The audience score, voted for by members of the public, is higher, sitting at a “fresh” 71 per cent.

However, the film’s “rotten” critical score represents an all-time low for The Mother’s director, acclaimed Kiwi filmmaker Niki Caro.

Caro’s previous films include the celebrated 2002 drama Whale Rider, 2015’s McFarland, USA, and the 2020 live-action adaptation of Mulan.

Other than two films which have not been given critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes (1998’s Memory & Desire and 2009’s The Vintner’s Luck), all seven of her other feature films had received “fresh” ratings.

Jennifer Lopez as The Mother in 'The Mother’ (Eric Milner/Netflix)

Earlier this week, it was announced that The Mother had chalked up a cumulative 83.71 million hours viewed in the first three days of its release, ranking as No 1 in 82 countries. The figure constituted the biggest opening weekend for any Netflix original film so far this year, beating releases such as Murder Mystery 2.

The Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston-starring sequel wasn’t the only film to be outperformed by The Mother when it came to one key metric.

The Mother is available to stream on Netflix now.