“Melania” chronicles 20 days in the life of Melania Trump leading up to the second inauguration of her husband, then president-elect Donald Trump. While the first half of the documentary consists primarily of event and wardrobe planning for the presidential transition, the second serves as a play-by-play of the ceremony and subsequent celebrations. Yet despite the centrality of Melania’s perspective and frequent voiceover narration from her, the film offers almost zero insight into the first lady as a person. Though she may be the protagonist, no inner life is revealed.
“Melania” is directed by the disgraced Brett Ratner — the man responsible for “Rush Hour,” a middling Hannibal Lecter adaptation, a terrible “X-Men” sequel and numerous sexual assault allegations. There’s no denying the film’s glitzy production value, with a competent visual presentation and a soundtrack overflowing with recognizable licensed music. The first half of the movie essentially follows Melania walking from one expensive-looking location to another as pop songs blare, feeling more like wealth porn than a documentary. The extravagance is fitting for a movie with a $75 million price tag, including $28 million reportedly paid to Melania Trump herself; Amazon’s bid has been widely characterized as an elaborate bribe for the president.
During these insipid early scenes, we follow the first lady’s awkward interactions with her fawning staff, including her fashion designer and inauguration event planner. They present her with options for dresses and decor and adulate her for her elegant taste when she gives minimal feedback. She is unconvincingly framed as the hands-on mastermind of the administration’s aesthetic as her narration intones, “My creative vision is always clear, and it’s my responsibility to share my ideas with my team so they can bring it to life.”
Lines like this are emblematic of Melania’s narration in general, which occupies a great deal of the film’s soundscape not taken up by music. It mostly consists of ChatGPT-coded self-promotion — “My education in architecture provides me with a serious design approach” — and empty platitudes about the importance of the presidential office. In these moments, she doesn’t just sound scripted — she seems like she’s sounding out the words phonetically without knowing what they mean. Her permanent model-face and flat delivery throughout the film ensure she remains as sphinx-like and enigmatic as ever.
What’s most striking about the film’s failure to offer any real insight into its subject is that it barely tries to be anything else, leaving the film totally devoid of purpose. Even as propaganda, it’s rarely concrete or specific enough to advance the Trump political agenda. During one unintentionally funny scene, Melania speaks to her husband, whom she calls Mr. President, on the phone. He launches into a boastful monologue about the extent of his electoral victory while she nods along idly with affirmations like “Yes … that’s a good one … yes … congrats.”
This moment is a microcosm of the film at large. It is a glossy companion piece that treats Melania’s “hard work” and “journey” with reverent seriousness even as the content is laughably minor — a snapshot of a random few weeks that, a year into the administration, reads as both insignificant and entirely unilluminating about what the Trump presidency actually is or does. Melania is lionized with repeated references to her child health and wellness campaign “Be Best” and its initiative “Fostering the Future,” but neither is discussed with enough depth or detail to suggest real authorship or involvement on her part.
Melania often mentions her son Barron to emphasize how proud she is of his accomplishments. These moments are accompanied by awkwardly cut-together footage of him shot from behind or at a distance. At times the cameraman seems to duck or pan away to avoid showing his face, presumably because he asked not to be included as a subject.
Once Inauguration Day arrives, the movie goes from awkward to dreadfully boring. Though based in real footage and events, the best documentaries find tension and dramatic arcs in their subjects to create narrative propulsion. “Melania” is totally inert, and it hardly tries to create any reason to keep watching. The entire climax and conclusion amount to public events filmed from slightly different angles, until the movie simply fizzles out. Ratner even has the gall to pilfer from “Goodfellas” twice, dropping both “Gimme Shelter” and “Then He Kissed Me” — the latter so overt it practically restages the film’s iconic tracking-shot sequence. It’s a baffling bit of cinematic cosplay for a documentary this empty.
What’s left is less a documentary than an extended sizzle reel. Ratner shoots everything with the same glossy neutrality, as if the camera’s job is simply to certify that the rooms are real; the gowns are real; the songs are licensed and the money is spent. But the closer “Melania” gets to history, the more it retreats from it: the Trump political agenda sits just offscreen as background noise, while efforts at emotional insight fall totally flat. Even the few personal beats it reaches for — Barron, charity initiatives, the mythology of the first lady’s duty — are treated as bullet points to be recited. In the end, the film doesn’t demystify Melania so much as preserve her, sealed behind perfect lighting and vague affirmations. You finish it knowing no more about her and almost nothing about the administration it’s meant to flatter — only that you’ve sat with her for nearly two hours, and you’d like those two hours back.
