Melania at the Multiplex

"When disgraced sex pest Brett Ratner volunteered to be Melania Trump's cinematic hagiographer, it was clear that the resulting product would be slick, vapid, and disinclined to force viewers to activate more than one brain cell at a time. It was also fitting and predictable that when presented with a choice of documentarians, the Trumps opted for the guy responsible for Rush Hour 3: Get me a Leni Riefenstahl, but without the talent!"

"Amazon paid $40 million for the movie, with an additional $35 million marketing budget, and $28 million of that went directly to Melania Trump. In the inauguration scenes, the camera pans to various tech billionaires-Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and, most importantly, Jeff Bezos. It is a little surreal to watch an oligarch bribe a president in such a public fashion, and then try to present it to the American public as entertainment-or worse, an important historical document."

"As the latter, it's more accurately described as propaganda, and I've had root canals that were more entertaining. It is also not a documentary by industry standards. The subject is also a producer, and she speaks a highly scripted voiceover in a stilted cadence that makes your car's GPS sound warm and inviting. This is not just my opinion. Melania herself says it's not a documentary but "a creative experience that offers perspectives, insights, and moments.""

The film presents Melania Trump through a polished but hollow cinematic portrait that prioritizes image over substance. A major studio purchase and marketing spend funded direct payments to the subject and showcased prominent tech billionaires in inauguration footage. The production choice of a controversial filmmaker produced a product criticized as propagandistic and unengaging. The runtime played to a sparse theater audience. The subject serves as a producer and delivers a heavily scripted voiceover in an awkward cadence, undermining standard documentary practices. The project is framed by its financial and promotional apparatus rather than investigative or historical rigor.

Read at The Nation