Melania Trump’s relative scarcity from her husband’s second term has not gone unnoticed. The first lady had an implicit excuse for her absence though: She’s been busy working on other things, like the documentary she was making, for which Amazon paid her (an insane) $40 million. She couldn’t possibly be expected to serve as first lady in the traditional sense, because she was dedicating all her time to playing the first lady in a movie, a movie that tells the story of a first lady who is bravely making a movie about herself. After a lavish, controversial premiere at the institution formerly known as the Kennedy Center Thursday night, the film, surely the culmination of backbreaking labor, is opening in theaters around the world Friday.
I went to the first available screening Friday morning, and after noticing when I bought my ticket that all the people who purchased one before me were also going alone, I was not surprised to see that nearly everyone else in the theater with me was a fellow journalist. We may not have had any Melania fan–on-the-street interviews, but at least we had esprit de corps, and people to snicker with. Did my fellow members of the fourth estate feel as embarrassed as I did walking in, knowing the theater employees might assume that we were there as fans? I for one did not anticipate how much the act of showing my ticket would feel like wearing a MAGA hat.
The movie is widely expected to be a box office flop, not that Amazon will admit to any ulterior motives for acquiring it. When asked about the exorbitant amount of money the company put into the movie, representatives from Amazon said, “We licensed the film for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.” It’s an enraging sentiment at a time when the company’s founder Jeff Bezos is planning to lay off 16,000 people while also gutting the Washington Post. For these reasons, I’m conflicted about recommending that anyone watch it.
But Melania is worth seeing despite, or maybe because of, how bad it is. Its story, to the extent there is one, is to follow the first lady through the 20 days leading up to last year’s inauguration. (Once again I ask: If she finished filming in January, where was she for the rest of the year? Apparently she has plans for further projects with director Brett Ratner.) My only real hesitation at calling it a propaganda film is that it’s arguably something worse than that. A proper propaganda film would be selling something, even if that something is mostly a cult of personality. For better or worse, mostly worse, the modern culture consumer is used to pleasant enough docu-propaganda from sports and pop stars like David Beckham and Beyoncé. You know the sort of hagiography you’re going to get with those. This is something else; this is thoroughly incompetent hagiography.
Melania is so fundamentally empty that it makes those other properties look like Ken Burns documentaries. It contains nothing: no ideas, no point of view, no tension beyond whether the tailors will be able to properly alter her inauguration turtleneck, not even any other characters apart from the glimpses you get of Donald Trump, unfortunately compelling as ever, and maybe the first lady’s fashion designer, but only because he seemed like a toady straight out of a Disney live-action remake.
Melania often reads as aggrieved at being misunderstood by the public. And yet, she has used her big opportunity to correct the record to communicate the very important message that she … is hard-working. Loves her family. Cares about clothes. Loves America. Speaks to her husband sometimes. Most of this she says in straightforward, bland voiceover that occasionally veers into purple prose: Her fashion-loving mother, for instance, “was the richest thread in my life,” Melania says at one point. If I were inclined to have any sympathy for the disgraced director Ratner, I might point out that once upon a time he knew how to make broadly entertaining movies and must on some level feel ashamed of this new effort. Where another celebrity doc would make a big, tear-jerking deal of Melania’s inspiring backstory as a Slovenian immigrant turned international model, this one barely mentions it. Melania is so stiff and either devoid of personality or unwilling to show one that Ratner essentially forces her to sing along to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” midway through the film. “We’re doing Carpool Karaoke with Melania!” he exclaims, even though all she has done is demonstrate that she knows at least some of the chorus.
If anyone has ever wondered if Melania would make a good addition to the Real Housewives franchise (OK, me), this movie ought to disabuse them of that notion. One of a Housewife’s main jobs is to act out semi-scripted scenes in a way that seems real or at least fun to watch, and Melania’s attempts at staging interviews for positions on her staff and a video conference with first lady of France Brigitte Macron, complete with an ostentatious zoom in on Melania’s notes about French children and screen time, are simply woeful.
Do we at least get any insight into Melania’s marriage? That’s a bright spot, actually. In a call about the results of the presidential election being certified, we learn that Trump speaks to Melania much like he speaks to the rest of the world, in brags, and even she finds it tiring. Later, when Trump is practicing a speech on Inauguration Day, Melania sits down to watch, and decides to show off for the cameras by suggesting an addition. “My proudest legacy will be that of peacemaker,” Trump says, before she breaks in: “Peacemaker and unifier.” He takes the note. The meaninglessness of both the original phrase and the addition are the perfect illustrations of this administration and the first lady’s contributions to it.
Melania’s son, Barron, who has long been assumed to be her genuine pride and joy, appears several times in the movie, though he doesn’t speak at all. (His voice has still only been heard in public possibly twice ever?) Trump and Melania briefly discuss him while riding in a car, and strangely both sound like they’ve maybe never met him. “He’s cute, we have cute conversations,” Trump says. “Yeah, I love him,” Melania responds placidly. “Yeah, I love him” is what you say about that co-worker you really like, not your child.
Melania has told us so many times that she doesn’t care about anything. She is fine with putting in the kind of half-assed effort that will result in slogans like “Be Best” and she’s willing to put up with a husband like Donald Trump. I don’t know how it still manages to be shocking, but it does. I’ll give her this: I’m not sure anyone else could have made a movie that taught me so remarkably little about its main subject. Meh-lania.
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