Melania hit theaters Friday—and within hours, MAGA was hard at work boosting its reputation.
The First Lady shared on X that the film had scored the #1 highest opening night for a documentary in recent years, insisting it was “loved by all.” The movie has been widely panned by critics, scoring just a 12 percent rating from professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing. But MAGA fans swooped in, giving Melania a 99 percent audience score.
The film, hyped by President Donald Trump as a “MUST WATCH,” opened in more than 1,500 theaters across the U.S. and Canada on a $40 million budget, with another $35 million spent on marketing.
Melania’s 99 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, called the “Popcornmeter,” is limited to users who verify ticket purchases—while its Tomatometer score comes from professional critics approved by the site.
“What a beautiful First Lady we are so blessed to have in the White House!” one five-star reviewer gushed. Another audience review lauded Melania’s “composure, kindness, and grace.”
The film, billed as an intimate look at Melania’s life during the 20 days leading up to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, was directed by Brett Ratner, who was accused by six women of sexual misconduct and is featured in the Epstein files. The documentary marks Ratner’s first directorial project since those allegations drove him out of Hollywood.
Yet another reviewer claimed their theater was “sold out” and “erupted in applause and cheers” at the end of the screening.
That may well be true—at least in conservative strongholds. Puck’s Matt Belloni reported that Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, and West Palm Beach were the top markets for Melania. But elsewhere, seats went empty.
At the AMC theaters in Waldorf, Maryland, multiple showtimes had zero seats sold up to two days before opening night.
The staggering 87-point gap between audience and critic scores is rare. For comparison, last year’s critically lauded Sinners landed in Rotten Tomatoes’ Top 300 films with near-identical scores from critics and audiences, sitting at 97 percent and 96 percent, respectively.
By contrast, Melania’s opening-day box office rival, Send Help—a horror film starring Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams—earned a far more proportional response, with a 94 percent critic score and an 89 percent audience score.
The movie was produced for $40 million—the same amount Amazon reportedly paid to secure exclusive rights to Melania. Send Help is projected to earn roughly $18 million for it’s opening weekend, while Melania is projected to earn $8 million.
Harry Enten of CNN predicted earlier this week that the movie would earn as little as $1 million in its opening weekend. The $8 million haul positions Melania as the top-earning documentary in a decade.
Despite the glowing audience reviews from MAGA viewers, the movie has met challenges elsewhere. One entire country skipped screening the film. The distributor for the movie in South Africa pulled the documentary from every theater in the country two days before its release.
