The first reviews of Melania are in—and they are brutal.
The Guardian’s Catherine Shoard rounded up a cheeky list of everything she learned about the first lady in the documentary, which she called “exhaustingly boring and chillingly vain” in her review. Among the most fascinating tidbits she discovered are that Mrs. Trump “has no friends” and appears to maintain “an entirely airless existence.”
Shoard also notes that the film includes a cringe signalong between Mrs. Trump and the film’s director Brett Ratner, from a scene in which viewers learn “Her favorite songs are ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Thriller.’” The critic writes that witnessing the moment on screen felt like watching “Carpool Karaoke on the highway to hell.”
The netherworld also came to mind for another Guardian critic, Xan Brooks, who writes of the “pure, endless hell” of viewing the documentary, which he describes as “one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality.” For him, Melania was “dispiriting, deadly, and unrevealing.”
“There is a decent documentary to be made about the former model from Slovenia, but this one is unredeemable,” Brooks writes.
Writing in Variety, critic Owen Gleiberman calls Melania “so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial,” and suggests it “should have been called ‘Day of the Living Tradwife.’” He concludes, “Melania, like the Trump regime, is a designed-from-the-top-down reality show that’s devoted to shutting reality out.
“To say that Melania is a hagiography would be an insult to hagiographies,” the Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck added in his review, noting that the film ends with “onscreen graphics listing Melania’s achievements as first lady in such laudatory fashion that North Korea would blush.”
The Independent’s Nick Hilton was equally displeased with his viewing. “To call Melania vapid would do a disservice to the plumes of florid vape smoke that linger around British teenagers,” writes Hilton of his disappointment at having suffered through the First Lady’s “grating voiceovers” in the film. “She calls herself a ‘mother, wife, daughter, friend,’ yet is only depicted preening and scowling,” he adds.
“The ‘film’ is part propaganda, sure, and part sop to Big Tech companies who require constant regulatory approval for financial manoeuvrings. Even then, it is bad.”
Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and the film’s funder, Jeff Bezos, all get screen time in the film.
Hilton describes one particularly “sycophantic” moment in Melania between Donald Trump and an event producer: “It is a visceral moment where audiences, around the world, will begin to taste the boot that the American establishment so blithely licks.” Hilton sums up the film as a “void of pure nothingness” and a “ghastly bit of propaganda.”
London’s Evening Standard was less visceral in its review, which gave the film three out of five stars. “Is the film worth $40 million? I can’t see it myself,” writes Melanie McDonagh, “but if Jeff Bezos and his millions are that easily parted, good luck to her.”
Elsewhere in London, the Express’ takeaway was more aligned with the general consensus that Melania is “a painfully sincere Trump puff piece, all style and no substance,” George Simpson writes, with “many scenes” that “bore.”
Finally, the Daily Beast’s own Kevin Fallon called the film an “abomination of filmmaking.” He writes, “Melania has nothing to say, and is certainly not insightful. It is not juicy, nor entertaining.”
