“Uncle Tom,” the new documentary from conservative commentator Larry Elder, has been gaining popularity on IMDB despite it being largely ignored by the mainstream media.
According to Newsbusters, Elder’s documentary is “currently ranked first in popularity” in IMDB’s documentary sub-category.
“The film comes in a hearty no. 6 in a similar category, one blending feature and TV-based documentaries,” reported the outlet. “It’s an impressive showing for a film with microscopic media fanfare and virtually no coverage outside of conservative channels.”
“Uncle Tom” can only be viewed at the website UncleTom.com and is not available on any streaming service. However, the movie generated nearly $400,000 in downloads during its first weekend of release.”
Speaking on “The Chicago Way” podcast, Elder said he wants the movie to prompt a “healthy discussion” among black Americans about moving forward in the country.
“The ‘Uncle Tom’ movie simply asks a very simple question: Why can’t we have an intelligent, healthy discussion within the black community without a whole cadre of well-educated, bright, thoughtful black people being maligned and discarded as sellouts?” said Elder. “What’s prompting this?”
As the Daily Wire reported recently, Larry Elder has been interviewed by reporters in various countries; in the United States, however, the movie has been met with mostly crickets:
You may not know much about “Uncle Tom,” though, if you only read mainstream U.S. media outlets. Elder says he’s been interviewed by reporters from Sweden, Australia, and England about the film.
The response stateside? Mostly crickets save select conservative outlets. Newsweek ran a piece on the film prior to its June 19 release, Elder notes. A conservative pundit covered it for the Chicago Tribune.
Elder can’t hide his disgust that the L.A. Times, his hometown paper, ignored the film, too. It’s part of a noticeable pattern.
“Not a single one of my books has been reviewed by the L.A. Times,” he says. “I’m a hometown boy and I can’t get arrested by the L.A. Times.”
The film has largely generated good business due to Larry Elder and Brandon Tatum’s sizable following on social media.
Over at Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an audience score of 96% with only two reviews from official critics. Dante James of Film Threat gave the film a 7 out of 10 rating, knocking the film for its bias while recommending it as a way for black people to confront some of the issues inherent in the Democratic Party:
I would absolutely recommend all Black folks (and others too, but the rest of y’all can figure that out) watch Uncle Tom. It’s a little misleading in some areas, especially if you know the players involved in this doc, but there are a lot of interesting historical facts about the breakdown of the Black family and how the whole welfare system targeted the Black community. But the biggest takeaway from this film is that we need to wake up to the fact that there is NO party that is completely “for us.” Malcolm X uses a brilliant analogy about “the wolf and the fox” (that should be watched in its entirety) to describe the Republican and Democratic parties.
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