by
“Melania,” the documentary on Melania Trump produced by Amazon, was released Friday in Metro Detroit and elsewhere in the country in 1,778 theaters, and was met with harsh criticism from the national media. One critic called it "terrible."
The film, which Amazon spent $75 million on, including marketing, sold $7 million in tickets in the U.S. and Canada, giving it the best start for a documentary in 14 years, the News York Times reports.
Michigan's Michael Moore's 2004 firm, Fahrenheit 9/11, holds the record for the highest-grossing documentary opening weekend, earning more than $23 million. The film reportedly cost about $16 million to make and market.
Locally, Melania showed in a number of theaters including in Birmingham, Taylor, Madison Heights, Sterling Heights and Clinton Township.
“We were pretty busy for it,” one employee at the Emagine Palladium in Birmingham told Deadline Detroit about weekend sales. An employee at the MJR Marketplace Cinema Theater in Sterling Heights, after with consulting management, said they don’t disclose ticket sales.
The New York Times reports that at the Cinemark Valley View and XD in Cleveland on Friday, the audience for the screening included a couple of buses from a senior center.
At the Alamo Drafthouse on Staten Island on Friday, Bob Schmidt, 60, saw the film and told The Times, “I wanted to see this movie kick Hollywood’s ass.” The Times reports that when the film showed Trump being sworn in there was applause, and someone yelled "Trump 2028!"
Many of the reviews for the movie, which focuses on Melania Trump’s 20 days leading up to her husband’s re-election in 2024, have been unkind.
Here are some:
“Melania” is a documentary that never comes to life. 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. Is it cheesy? At moments, but mostly it’s inert. It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called “Day of the Living Tradwife.”
Melania, Brett Ratner’s Melania Trump movie, is a purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary. If you were making a movie that parodied the current first lady of the United States, I’m not sure what you’d do differently...
This is a work of propaganda, but director Brett Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl. Missing are the German filmmaker’s awe-inspiring visuals and hypnotic edits; instead, Ratner substitutes endless shots of the gaudy, excessive Trump aesthetic as Melania floats through Trump Tower, private jets, motorcades, and gala dinners until she lands at the White House.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times:
By the end of “Melania,” a glossy, curiously impersonal, outwardly apolitical portrait of Melania Trump, you are no closer to knowing its famous subject than you were at the start, even after many changes of time, place, clothes and towering high heels...
Much like the dress that Mr. Pierre designed for her — a white number whose bold black zigzag obscures all of its seams — Mrs. Trump seems exceptionally good at keeping hidden how everything, her marriage and family included, fits together.
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.
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!”
Madison Colombo, Fox News (A news story):
First lady Melania Trump debuted a new documentary that offers a rare look at her life. Marc Beckman, the film’s producer and a senior advisor to the first lady, said audiences left the premiere "inspired."
The film premiered Thursday at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and follows the first lady through the 20 days of her life leading up to President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
Beckman, who has worked with Melania Trump for more than two decades, said the film highlights her independence and commitment to her family, business and the country.
