Released: 30th January
Seen: 23rd March
Donald Trump is a horrific fascistic scumbag, a useless pile of flesh that’s held together by bitterness and rape allegations. He’s up there on the list of worst world leaders to ever exist and yes, I am including the German guy with the funny moustache in that assessment. He’s vile, putrid, disgusting, and that’s the polite terms I can use without potentially risking getting investigated by the FBI. I do not like the man whatsoever, and I never ever have… I also have never been a fan of his wife, Melania. I’ve seen other people on the left try to pass her off as some kind of victim who secretly hates him and needs to just get away but I’ve never been one of those people, I’ve always been down to say she’s just as bad as him so when I heard there was a documentary being made about her, I was not looking forward to it. Of course, her documentary’s been a big talking point all year; it made so much money but also got critically panned, and it’s been the butt of every joke about a bad documentary for several months now. Now I’m not going to pretend I’m a fan of the film’s subject matter (did you work that part out already), but hey, I can enjoy a documentary about a bad person if the documentary is done well… but this isn’t, it’s Melania, and there is nothing good about Melania.
Melania follows the current first lady during the twenty days leading up to the inauguration of her rapist husband at the start of 2025. We watch as she goes for dress fittings, picks out plates and invitations, prepares furniture to be moved into the White House while she and her husband occupy it, and of course, waits for a hat to be fixed so she can wear it on the special day. There might occasionally be other major moments that she has to pretend to care about, such as the death of decent human being Jimmy Carter, but most of the film is just Melania pretending she’s a creative genius planning a basic black tie event that is so traditional you could probably train a small dog to organise it with much less shit being spread everywhere.
Now, it’s well known that this film is essentially a 40-million-dollar bribe by Amazon to the Trumps, but even still, one would hope that a documentary that follows one of the most famous people on the planet might try to scratch at the surface a little and interrogate how she feels about certain things. You know, maybe ask her what she thinks about the fact that they’ve been out of office for four years because everyone thought her husband was a cunt or maybe the insurrection that lead to her husband being investigated for years… but that would imply this film actually is interested in exploring its main subject in any depth and “depth” is not something the person making this film is interested in… then again the person making this film is Brett Ratner, the only thing he’s interested in is making sure that the phrase “Brett Rattner Sexual Assault Allegations” isn’t the top result when you Google him.
Even with Melania being blatant propaganda and a bribe while also being about a vile figure, that didn’t mean it had to be bad. People make great documentaries about bad people all the time. The O.J. docuseries from a few years ago is a gold standard on how to make interesting art about a reprehensible figure, but this film doesn’t have those kinds of aspirations. Why would it? It’s made by a sex pest, produced by the main subject who is almost terminally boring. The biggest takeaway you will get from this movie is that Melania likes the songs Billie Jean and Thriller by Michael Jackson… you know, the two songs by him that EVERYONE likes? That’s it, that’s all you get about her as a human being. Sure, they try to have moments of vulnerability with her talking about her dead mother, but she’s so dead-eyed that you really can’t tell that she even cared about her. It also doesn’t help that this moment of reflection happens by cutting away from an interview being done with her father, who was also talking about his dead wife, but instead of letting him talk about her, Melania cuts in via shitty voice-over.
The voice-over element of Melania is possibly the most painful element because Melania just keeps spouting inane nonsense that she seems to believe is deep and meaningful, but it’s just not. She doesn’t say a single thing that’s interesting or informative. I don’t know anything new about this woman that I didn’t before I started watching the film. I mean, I know she seems to think she’s some kind of creative genius (which is hilarious to say when wearing basic black and preparing one of the most repetitive events in world history), but we never get to see any proof of that. We’re never shown any reason why she’s so great, why she might be worth a damn. We’re told about her modelling past in Slovenia, but you know what might help? Maybe showing some of it? Maybe show some photos to explain why she was such a big deal in the modelling world… oh wait, is there a reason we can’t show any photos of her modelling work? I can’t imagine why we can’t show that!
Even if everything that she did during those twenty days was boring as hell (and it was), surely the film could maybe take the time to interview some people who have nice things to say about Melania? Well, it kinda tries to get them to praise her while they work with her in the room with them (so, ya know, no pressure to kiss her ass there) but beyond that awkward situation, there’s no real interviews with anyone who might be able to tell us more about her. No one really talks about Melania as a person; she’s a thing that exists that occasionally wears outfits, and that’s kind of it. What does she think about the way the world sees her or her husband? We’ll never know because no one asks, at best she’ll spout the company line of “No one has ever been treated like my husband” and that’s it, no one will ever ask her to interrogate WHY he’s treated that way because that would require to look below the surface and this film will be damned if it looks below the surface.
It also doesn’t help that the surface this film keeps staring at is just bad. It’s not a well-made film on a basic level, from badly framed shots (one so bad that I almost pissed myself laughing) to weird choices of filter over modern-day footage to horrible editing decisions. The most fundamental elements of making a film are ignored in favour of just throwing crap on screen and hoping it works. Even the big sweeping dramatic shots that the film tries to pull off, like the one from the trailer where Melania looks into the camera saying “here we go again” feel try-hard and bad, it’s pointless stylism because there’s nothing else to offer. There is no substance so the film has to lean into style, but it’s also made by a director who hasn’t worked in a decade (because of the sex assault claims), so it’s like he’s forgotten how to do these basic tricks. I’m just saying, if you’re going to do propaganda, then at least try to make it look good. I’ve made this joke before, but I really need people to remember that at least Leni Reifenstal knew how to frame a fucking shot!
Perhaps most laughable is how this film keeps trying to suggest that Melania is doing something truly groundbreaking as the first lady, that she’s some kind of grand game changer, but it never shows us what she’s doing that’s so new. Planning the inauguration? That’s basically what all first ladies do. Talking with victims of horrors overseas? All first ladies do that. Meeting with foreign leaders to talk about pet projects? Literally the most famous thing that all first ladies have done since first ladies were expected to take on projects other than “Stand there, look pretty”. There’s nothing new here, nothing about this that’s interesting or exciting. Melania wants us to believe that we’re watching someone great changing the world, when really we’re just watching Temu Eva Braun try on a new hat over the course of two hours.
Melania can’t even be bothered to be interesting propaganda. It’s a poorly made documentary about an uninteresting subject that can’t even be bothered to try and understand her on any fundamental level. If all you knew about Melania was that she was from Slovenia and liked fashion, then congrats, you know everything you will learn about her from this documentary. Calling it boot licking would imply that a boot was cleaned at some point, there is nothing here that even does that. It’s a film that offers nothing to anyone, except, of course, the 40 million that got given to the Trumps in order to get it made. Watching this film just feels like a waste of time, but at least I can say I did something productive while this film was in my life… I paused the movie about two minutes in to go and have a massive shit, which was a lot more interesting than anything that happened in Melania.
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