History has shown that Netflix users find light and fluffy rom-coms to be nothing short of irresistible, which has been hammered home once again this week by the most popular movie on the entire platform.
A spiritual successor of sorts to the never-ending franchise that kicked off with 1950’s Father of the Bride and gave rise to a TV series, the Steve Martin-fronted remake and its sequel, as well as the 2022 remake, Freaky Friday and Mean Girls director Mark Waters’ Mother of the Bride easily snagged the top spot with over 38million hours viewed.
Despite taking an utter pasting from critics, the promise of sun-kissed locales and star-crossed romance has been too good for viewers to turn down. That being said, Mother of the Bride looks like The Godfather compared to the runner-up on the viewership rankings, which has stated a better case than most to be named as the single worst film of 2024.
Sony’s Madame Web is the textbook example of how not to make a superhero flick, but for whatever reason, it’s accrued more than 20million viewing hours in its debut week. Why? Who knows, but sometimes there is admittedly a perverse pleasure to be derived from watching atrocious works of cinema.
The third and fourth places both go to Netflix newcomers, with Shia LaBeouf’s murder mystery thriller Disturbia – which was proven in court not to be a blatant rip-off of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window – ending up ahead of the streaming service’s latest family-friendly in-house animated feature Thelma the Unicorn.
There’s a healthy representation for animation in general, with Shrek, Sonic the Hedgehog, and The Boss Baby all present and accounted for among the ten top-viewed titles on Netflix, while sandwiched in between the green ogre and the blue speedster is Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell’s gnarly and sorely underappreciated sci-fi action thriller Upgrade.
Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted is already in danger of dropping out of the top ten altogether having plummeted from first to ninth in the space of just three weeks, with his confectionary comedy clearly boasting little in the way of staying power. The tenth and final spot goes to viral marketing sensation and razor-sharp horror Smile, reinforcing the sheer breadth of content that subscribers have been devouring.
The Netflix charts are the only place anybody is likely to find Shrek and Sonic alongside Dakota Johnson trying to unravel the mystery behind the man who was with her mom in the Amazon researching spiders right before she died, but as they say, variety is the spice of life.
The 10 most popular films on Netflix this week:
- Mother of the Bride
- Madame Web
- Disturbia
- Thelma the Unicorn
- Shrek
- Upgrade
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- The Boss Baby
- Unfrosted
- Smile
