I just paid to go see Melania so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.
Amazon MGM Studios withheld this so-called documentary/infomercial from the prying eyes of critics with not even a Thursday preview. It is a move that doesn’t give one comfort that they are about to see a masterpiece, but in its own way, Melania is a masterpiece of manipulation.
To be fair, though, I am not the audience for this mash note to America’s first lady. However, I did sit and watch it at the 11:35 a.m. show on opening day at Cinemark in West L.A. with an audience of about 25 mostly gray-haired patrons (all the handicap parking spots were taken) who seemed pleased to be there and not at the latest Jason Statham movie next door. They sat attentive throughout, and guess what? They even applauded when the end credits rolled after a couple of graphics touting her “achievements” since returning to the White House a year ago. The size of the audience in the smallish auditorium surprised me on a Friday morning. I thought based on social media chatter and filling the internet with screen shots of empty pre-sales that I might be the only customer. In fact it’s estimated that box office for the weekend appears to be overperformaning predictions.
The focus is on Melania’s return as first lady, and director Brett Ratner puts his cameras on her with unfettered access — supposedly – in the 20 days leading to the inauguration. The film also marks Ratner’s return to filmmaking after being accused of sexual misconduct by several women. This is his first feature as a director since Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules in 2014. You can’t say he is not versatile in subject matter.
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Aside from looking like the whole thing was written and produced by her staff, Melania makes the cardinal sin of just being simply butt-numbingly boring, especially in the forever-taking last act of sitting through the inauguration all over again in eye-drooping detail. There is nothing in this section that Fox News viewers didn’t see the first time around, with one exception when Donald Trump lets Ratner’s cameras film his rehearsal for the big speech and catches Melania’s single contribution replacing the word “warmonger” with the word “unifier.” At least that cleard that up.
The last instance of a first lady doing a show like this one was when Jackie Kennedy gave her famous tour of the White House. That clearly was staged every bit as carefully as this movie seems to be. But then, to my knowledge Mrs. Kennedy didn’t receive $40 million for her participation. You have to give this Mrs. Trump (there have been three of them) props for bilking Jeff Bezos out of that kind of cash for a documentary, not to mention another $35 million in marketing.
So what we get for that investment? Clearly choreographed sequences with Melania and her fashion designer, Melania and her architects, Melania and her staff, Melania talking via Zoom to the French first lady Brigitte Macron and on and on. We go with her to New York City and Trump Tower as well as St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where she mourns the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death on January 9, 2025, with priests who give her a blessing. We go of course to Mar-a-Lago, we see her renovations to the Rose Garden and the Bowling Alley among other first-term White House memories. One of my favorite moments is when she is doing staged interviews with staff for job returns. To one she asks the piercing question, “So what new suggestions would you have for my East Wing office?” If I were the applicant and had the hindsight we do now, I might have said, “Do you mean before or after your husband bulldozes the whole thing?” At the very least it would have been nice for this film to let us know where her new office is now since the president destroyed the old one, the building and the White House movie theater, which meant they had to set up a screen in the East Room to even show this movie there last weekend.
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This is not to say there aren’t some fun things. When Ratner asks (off camera) about a favorite singer, it takes her not a nanosecond to respond with Michael Jackson, and favorite song (“dere are so many”) is “Billie Jean.” Right on cue we hear that song in the limo, with Melania doing a pretty good lip sync, something she does as well for Trump’s beloved “YMCA” while exiting the last of the inaugural balls. Also, as she enters the area of the inauguration, we hear her voiceover talking about coming to this country as an immigrant and that this is what America was made of and how important it is to remember that and welcome that. Oh god, pleaseeeeeeee show this movie to Stephen Miller. I will provide the popcorn.
One rare instance of completely unedited honesty came in the course of a phone call to her press secretary. A man on the end of the line is heard relaying a request from Puck and a hollywood reporter there named Matt Belloni. He would like an interview with Melania about her reported Amazon deal. When the Press Sec’y asks why, he replies he just wants to know about the movie and asks if she will pass on the request. When she hangs up somebody off camera asks, “you aren’t gonna do that for those Hollywood media types (or meaner words to that effect). “Of course not,” she answers. I guess Ratner left this all in as some comment on the Trump world’s view of Hollywood.
Another interesting moment came with her husband as details were laid out for them on the way inauguration day January 20 would go down. “Why are we opposite the College Football National Championship game?” Trump pouts. “Didn’t we have this date first?” Yes for a couple of hundred years, Donald. “I am sure they did this on purpose ,” he snarks.
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To be fair there is also a lot of emphasis on the good work she does for Foster Children, and kids in general, her pet projects we are told. In fact it is well known she asked the President to demand that Putin return the thousands of Ukranian kids Russia uprooted and sent to Moscow separating them from their family. If I may offer an idea Mrs. Trump? Please whisper in your husband’s ear that it would only be right to also return the many kids, including a well publicized Spider-Man backpack-wearing five year old abducted by ICE on his way to school in Minneapolis and sent to a detention camp with others in Texas,
At any rate if any of this sounds as compelling as it seemed for the audience I watched it with for one hour and 44 minutes this morning, then go for it. It just feels to me to be a movie whose release is off key with so much wrong in this country and this world in the year that has passed since it was shot. Melania seems a little too rich these times.
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Title: MelaniaDistributor: Amazon MGM StudiosRelease Date: January 30, 2026Director: Brett RatnerWith: Melania Trump, Herve Pierre, Adam Lippes, Donald TrumpRating: PGRunning time: 1 hr 44 mins
