Where is my t-shirt?
Why was no one standing outside the cinema where I made the brave decision to attend the first opening-day screening of the Melania documentary, offering me a selection of “I Survived the ‘Melania’ Movie” novelty t-shirts for purchase? Or, perhaps, a lil’ mug?
I don’t want to blow anyone’s minds here or throw you off your balance when I inform you that the Melania documentary, now in theaters, is terrible.
Were it not for scattered laughter-inducing scenes—most of which, I would gather, were not intentionally humorous—I would rule it an abomination. For my $20 ticket (robbery!) and a misery-inducing walk to the theater in the bone-chilling cold, if not a t-shirt, I got some chuckles in return. And, I guess, a war story.
Of course, everyone knew the film, directed for an obscene amount of money by notorious sex pest Brett Ratner, was going to be bad. It’s the specific kind of bad I was on a fact-finding mission for.
Melania is a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it’s so expected and utterly pointless.
“Everyone wants to know, so here it is,” she says at the top, teasing that cameras will follow her for the 20 days leading up to the inauguration, revealing her “transition from private citizen to first lady…again.” All the film really reveals is that Melania was, indeed, alive those 20 days, and even walked from room to room and, in some cases, from the car to a private jet.
We see her meet people and attend events, but we rarely get a sense of how she feels about any of it, her face infamously expressionless in every interaction, as if it’s been cast in a kiln. Instead, each scene is narrated by Melania, with AP U.S. History textbook-like explanations of historical landmarks and traditions and innocuous phrases about her desire to be “an inspiring force.”
You know those videos that play on airplanes before takeoff that are like, “Here at United Airlines, we believe travel means adventure and adventure means family and family means synergy,” and then different employees smile at the camera while showing you how they do their jobs? This movie was the Trumpian version, a corporate advertorial for the office of the First Lady, to justify (defend? clarify?) her seeming useleness to the American people.
The Wikipedia-esque simplification of Melania’s duties and the film’s total neutering of the drama and stakes of those pre-inauguration days reminded me of those E! True Hollywood Story programs I used to put on and then fall asleep to on a rainy Sunday. At least then, there was the possibility of being woken up by a hilarious Budweiser commercial or something. In Melania, all you get to rouse you from slumber is a bizarre scene in which she lip-syncs the (wrong) words to “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson, her “favorite recording artist.”
The thing with Melania is that no one wants to actually see the documentary, but so many people are curious what’s in it, which I certainly empathize with. (There were about 12 people in my theater, which seats roughly 200.)
There may be a sense that critics were circling, ready to pounce on the film, directed by a prick most were happy to leave on the industry’s castaway island and a masturbatory ego exercise for the administration, released at a time when the country is in crisis. But the truth is, the claws don’t need to come out. Claws would be overkill, a case of overpreparedness when all that’s required to pick apart this drivel is a pair of eyes and a dull pencil.
Melania strains to make the point that the first lady is a passionate philanthropist, with her Be Best and Fostering the Future initiatives incessantly mentioned but never covered beyond Melania saying to various people, “I have the Be Best and Fostering the Future initiatives.” A jump-scare cameo by French first lady Brigitte Macron does more legwork in that mission than anything else in the film.
There’s no snark to be made about a meeting Melania has with a freed Hamas hostage, who is devastated over her husband’s continued captivity. And a segment where Melania lights a prayer candle at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is moving, once you get over the tackiness of the sweeping camera pans and the priests’ fangirling.
The truth is, my soul left my body during the very first seconds of the film, when a drone shot over the ocean makes its way over the Mar-a-Lago grounds to Melania’s feet in heels, walking to her car as The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” plays. But my soul didn’t just escape and flee, which it would have been in its every right to do. No, it lingered, glaring at me the entire Melania running time with a mixture of disappointment and anger, like an owner would at their dog after it ate the garbage.
The over-the-top direction and deranged music cues—my jaw dropped when “It’s a Man’s World” blasted as Barron Trump appears on screen—combined with Brett Ratner’s action-thriller background with films like Rush Hour and X-Men: The Last Stand, make for an unsettling viewing experience. Every time the camera swooped and the score crescendoed while someone got into a helicopter or jet, I was certain it was about to explode.
The most enlightening parts of the documentary were the fleeting, clearly scheduled interactions she has with her husband, where flickers of humanity strain through the facade, so powerful is her disdain and boredom with him. These moments are, dare I say it, quite fun. I’ve never seen the phrase “grin and bear it” on such painful display; I swear her veneers were about to shatter at one point.
Melania has nothing to say, and is certainly not insightful. It is not juicy, nor entertaining.
Will a truly unbelievable scene in which Melania repeatedly dances to “YMCA”—the only person doing so, and using the wrong hand gestures—become a meme? Perhaps. It was as if someone accidentally turned the robot controls up too high for a brief moment, before frantically correcting. But one goofy moment does not a worthy film make.
Though, in lieu of the “I Survived…” t-shirt I deserve, I will settle for someone making that meme.
