Brett Ratner’s $75 million documentary about Melania Trump has received a miserable 8 percent rating among critics, according to early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Melania, which covers the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration in 2025, was widely panned, including by the Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon, who called it “a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it’s so expected and utterly pointless.”
The documentary’s rotten score, based on a dozen reviews as of early Friday evening, managed to underperform that of the much-maligned Cats, the 2019 musical comedy that is still the butt of jokes. That film garnered a 19 percent rating on the Tomatometer.
Other critics were similarly disgusted by the documentary, which Melania, 55, called “beautiful,” “emotional,” and “fashionable” during Thursday night’s premiere at the Kennedy Center.
“The fun’s not infectious and the guests are a nightmare, and two hours of Melania feels like pure, endless hell,” The Guardian’s Xan Brooks wrote.
“A documentary that never comes to life,” Variety’s Owen Gleiberman opined. “It’s a ‘portrait’ of the First Lady of the United States, but it’s so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck commented that the Amazon-MGM film “fawns so lavishly over its subject that you feel downright unpatriotic not gushing over it.”
Only one critic thus far has determined that the film was deserving of the “fresh” rather than “rotten” label.
Even some of the people who worked on Melania want nothing to do with it.
According to Rolling Stone, two-thirds of the film’s New York-based crew didn’t want to be credited. One member told the publication they hoped it “flops,” while another said, “I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the propaganda element of this.”
It’s too early to say how Melania fared on its opening weekend, of course. (Projections have ranged from $1 to $5 million.) However, a WIRED analysis found that, as of Jan. 29, it had sold out at just two theaters nationwide. The documentary opened in an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 theaters in the U.S.
