Melania May Go Down in History as One of the Least Revealing Documentaries Ever Made

Since it wasn’t screening for critics (or at least, I sure wasn’t invited), my first opportunity to see the new $40 million Melania Trump documentary directed by Brett Ratner came on a Thursday the week of release, when the first public showings of pretty much all new movies take place. I logged in a day or two before to see how crowded (or, as is usually the case, not crowded) those showings were going to be, and noticed a few things. First, someone, or some group, had apparently bought out the front row of every showing, at the only theater near where I live (Fresno, California) that was showing it that day. Second, nearly every other seat that wasn’t in the front row was still available. At the time I figured buying an advance ticket wasn’t too pressing, and continued on with my day.

I logged in again about an hour before the showtime I’d been planning to attend, only to discover that all those Thursday showings had mysteriously disappeared, apparently having been canceled (I haven’t been able to reach anyone there for an explanation). That left Friday screenings (now, curiously, available at every theater in town), and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I chose the first screening of the day at the theater on a college campus, and part of me wondered if the scene would be anything like the one described in a tweet I'd seen earlier that day from a New York-based reporter:

As I arrived at the theater, lining up just behind a woman with a hearing aid having a hard time buying a ticket and a married couple who I helped find the theater door, I was reminded not for the first time that Fresno and New York City are very different. I soon found myself one of only two patrons who looked to be under 50, in a theater that was very nearly sold out but for the first few rows. There were ten women aged 70-90 in the row in front of me (seemingly the target audience for Melania) and it was abundantly clear that no one was there ironically. A strapping-looking lady just to my right wore a visor and jean jacket both branded “National Finals Rodeo.” As we waited in the darkened theater, two more women stood next to the stairs. “Linda, where are you?” one of them asked. “I’m over here!” Linda shouted, raising her hand. Everyone laughed.

After a bespoke collection of trailers for a Christian-music biopic and Nate Bargatze’s new dumb-dad comedy—MAGA folks love Nate Bargatze—the movie began. When the Melania title card appeared, the rodeo woman clapped and whooped, and she wasn’t the only one. A few seats in the other direction, I thought I heard someone crying. It turned out to just be an older person with a lung issue’s labored breathing.

The atmosphere made me feel young at first, though the feeling wouldn’t last. The whole audience save for two made it through all 104 excruciatingly dull minutes of Melania without getting up to pee. As far as I could tell, no one fell asleep. Truly impressive, considering even Donald Trump himself looked asleep during the eulogy for Melania Trump’s mother depicted in the film. (A few days ago, I’d overheard thirdhand that some of the production crew, many of whom had taken their names off of the film, had tried their best to subtly editorialize. I wondered if the inclusion of the Sleepy Trump moment was an example of this).

Otherwise, Melania is an exercise in tedium, nearly two hours of an affectless woman stepping on and off of airplanes bookended by gratuitous wealth-porn montages. Occasionally, she would engage in surely-staged conversations with her stylists, tailors, and interior decorators, who then gush things like “Melania is such a great client because she knows exactly what she wants—she used to be a model!”

The voiceovers, read haltingly in Melania’s Slovenian Dracula accent, were funny at first, with her monologuing faux meaningfully about her pet issues, like “cy-boor booly-ink” and waxing introspective about “vhy I vonted to make theess fil-um” and “a day dat was so reech weeth mean-ink.” After a while, even the goofy voiceovers faded into background, so obviously absent any genuine sentiment or broader import.

If Melania is noteworthy in any way, it’s as one of the least revealing documentaries (or whatever you want to call it) ever made. She and her husband talk and interact with all of the intimacy of a CEO addressing his employees over Zoom at a company all-hands. Its most interesting revelation is that it took three people (Melania plus two stylists) to lower the absurd Carmen Sandiego hat onto her perfectly coiffed head before the inauguration. In footage from the event, even the stuff used in the documentary, you can barely see her shadowed eyes. She looks like Raiden from the original Mortal Kombat. Elon Musk and Dana White were also there. But you probably remember that. That’s largely Melania in a nutshell: a nostalgic tour of B-roll from its audience’s favorite reality show.

Brett Ratner, the once-disgraced director of such films as Money Talks and the Rush Hour series, does his best to enliven the proceedings, with heroic shots of Melania’s heels as she steps in and out of black SUVs and constant needle drops. The film opens with the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” over drone footage of Mar-A-Lago, which soon fades into Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

Ostensibly the inclusion of “Billie Jean” is justified by a moment later in the film, when Melania, during a limo ride, tells Ratner, who's interviewing her off-camera, that Michael Jackson is her favorite artist. Her favorite song? “Billie Jean.” “Are we really doing carpool karaoke with Melania Trump?!” a wildly annoying Ratner gushes while they (mostly him) sing along tunelessly to the aforementioned track in the car.

It masquerades as one of the film’s few candid moments, though for me it only offered a strange sense of deja vu. I’d seen this entire sequence before, in a clip Ratner himself posted, of Michael Jackson and Brett Ratner grooving to R. Kelly’s “Ignition” (how many alleged sex criminals is that??) in the back of a limo in Miami in 2003. Ratner has also described playing Michael Jackson songs on his movie sets. The clip of Chris Tucker dancing to Michael Jackson in Rush Hour was reportedly a candid moment that ended up in the film. Everything in Melania, to paraphrase the narrator of Fight Club, feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. There’s the Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” needle drop from the end of Marty Supreme, in this case signposting a false ending that feeds, incongruously, into a somber scene of Melania and her husband attending a memorial at Arlington Cemetery. Presumably I need not remind you of Trump’s famous quote about preferring “the soldiers who didn’t get captured.”

In another solemn scene, Melania meets with Aviva Siegel, a South African-Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, who is there to lobby FLOTUS for the release of her then-still hostage husband, Keith Siegel, also an Israeli citizen originally from North Carolina. He was released in February 2025, which the film presents as a victory for its title character in the film’s epilogue text. Though, as with the “Billie Jean” moment, I was left wondering whether this was originally a pet cause for Melania, or for Ratner, who emigrated to Israel in 2023 and returned just in time to direct this movie. Which he did as part of a reported $40 million deal with Jeff Bezos—whose bald pate in turn makes a brief cameo at an inauguration dinner (Elon and Zuck are also there, for anyone keeping receipts).

Possibly this was lost on the audience of mostly older women at my screening, who seemed to eat it all up. They clapped and whooped at Trump taking the oath of office. When Obama or Biden or Kamala appeared, there was a palpable titter, as if they couldn’t decide whether to jeer and settled on knowing snickers. They oohed and ahhed with awe-struck delight as Melania, at long last, removed her high heels at the end of what we’re told was a 22-hour day. (For anyone who has visited the former Eastern Bloc, their women’s ability to do damned near anything in sky-high heels is genuinely impressive).

The shoeless Melania, seated on a couch at the end of a room in the White House, shares a supposedly tender moment with her husband, about what a momentous day, this inauguration day, was for them both and for the country. (During an earlier shot of them at a massive rally, Melania’s voiceover proudly intones, “Eet was von-derfool to share theess spay-shal moment weeth our beegest fans, A-merry-cans.”) After a couple pleasantries, Trump wanders off, presumably to sleep in a different room than his wife. Not that the true nature of their relationship is of any great concern compared to all the things Trump does that actively affect our lives, but maybe it says something that they couldn’t even convincingly perform chemistry for a staged vanity documentary?

Or maybe it doesn't. Who really cares?

As the credits rolled, I tried and failed to muster up the courage to start peppering attendees with questions. I didn’t want to see myself as yet another journalist doing a Trump country safari, even though I sort of was that, even though I live here. The Red State/Blue State divide is now mostly spiritual.

Luckily one thing I’ve learned about MAGA Boomers is that you don’t have to ask many questions to find out how they feel. Mostly, you can just listen. They love to tell you, and they generally talk loudly.

“She is just first class, all the way,” a blonde woman told her friend on the way out.

“I’m glad that’s not my job, though,” the friend added.

“I sure wouldn’t want to be in the spotlight like that all the time,” the blonde agreed. “But she’s a model, so she’s used to it.”

“The music was great,” another lady outside told a friend during a cigarette break. “It was, like, our music.”

I didn’t much know what to make of this tremendously dull extended sizzle reel, but clearly it hit home for the world’s various Lindas.

Who is Melania Trump? She used to be a model. She’s from Slovenia. She’s proud to represent America, and she has always been very ambitious. With Melania, she has achieved one of the final milestones on the checklist of any aspiring icon: a movie with her name on it. Quite an impressive journey. One day we may learn what it took to get there and how she felt about it.