Melania: Trump of the Will

Let’s talk about Melania, the new “documentary” about the First Lady. No doubt you already know billionaire lickspittle Jeff Bezos paid $40 million for the rights and has spent $35 million on promoting it (more than has been spent promoting every other documentary in the U.S. so far in 2026 combined). And that it was directed by the disgraced Brett Ratner, who was accused of rape by multiple women. And that there was a White House screening the day after intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was disarmed and shot dead by ICE agents in the streets of Minneapolis that Melania’s husband had sent there.

In short, it seems like a typical cultural product of the Trump family — tone deaf, corrupt, and epically self-serving. But I confess to being kind of curious about the film itself — whether it had anything real or interesting to say about the First Lady, whether accidentally or on purpose. Or maybe my interest in spending 104 minutes with Melania was just masochism. Either way, on a frigid New York afternoon, I forced myself to watch it, alongside twelve or so other souls, in a theatre built for one hundred.

Melania: Twenty Days to History (0/5 stars)
Directed by:  Brett Ratner
Starring:  Melania Trump
Running time: 104 mins

Melania opens with the First Lady striding into an Escalade to the opening guitar lines of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. (Maybe the Stones need the money. Or maybe the filmmakers used the song without permission, as the Trumps are wont to do.) She’s in a convoy whisking her from Mar-a-Lago to New York.

“Everyone wants to know,” Melania says in voice over. “So here it is. Twenty days in my life — family, philanthropy, history — becoming the First Lady of the United States… again.”

So this is the conceit of Ratner’s debut as a documentarian: following the First Lady for twenty days as she bounces between Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, and DC, in the runup to the inauguration.

The clock begins ticking with a parade of sycophantic courtiers — dress designers, event planners, and interior designers — showing Melania their handiwork between the gilded rococo walls of Trump Tower, with her minor suggestions treated as if they were evidence of her creative genius. There are also affairs of state: Melania attends the funeral of President Carter with her husband. Melania confers about the children of the world with Brigitte Macron and Queen Rania of Jordan. Melania meets with an Israeli woman, Aviva Siegel, who spent 51 days as a captive of Hamas and whose husband, was, at the time, still in captivity (he was released after 484 days).

All of these events are, of course, calculated to demonstrate her energy, capableness, and kindness. Fortunately, she didn’t wear her “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket to any of these meetings. Unfortunately, this viewer had the impression that both Mrs. Macron and Queen Rania were blowing smoke at the American First Lady between more important obligations. And it’s hard to tell what Melania feels, if anything. She is so stiff on camera, it’s difficult to see if there is any inner life — or if the inner life is anything but outer.

The voice-overs don’t help. It’s very strange to listen to her, as she goes about her fancy-pants non-business, ruminating about her “own journey as an immigrant,” when her husband’s administration is rounding up naturalized citizens, green-card holders, and “illegals,” with equal cruelty and without due process. Maybe “strange” isn’t the right term — perhaps “psychotic cluelessness” is more accurate.

The final act of the film is sheer triumphalism — the pre-inaugural luncheon, the inauguration itself, the Commander-in-Chief Ball, the Inaugural Ball — with Trump looking pale and a little unsteady and Melania, in her severe outfits, looking like a Bond villainess. I felt alternatively pummeled and bored as, again and again, the Trumps bask in the adoration of the crowds, while the President gloats and glowers.

The last scene is Melania having her official portrait taken. She’s in a pantsuit, behind a desk, trying to convey that she’s really getting down to business. She’s going to lean in like nobody’s ever leaned in before. We’re listening to Boney M.’s Sunny as Melania poses and poses. And it occurred to me that this is both the theme of both the movie and her life — mistaking the appearance of work for actual work.

Earlier in Melania, she explains that “the transition between first families is a logistical challenge.” And it is interesting to learn that a mere five hours passes between one First Family getting their stuff out of the White House and the next First Family getting their stuff in. However, Melania seems to conflate describing this challenge as having anything whatsoever to do with solving it — or even why we should feel that solving it, so that the new First Family should be able to serve the nation, is important.

This is, I suppose, outside the purview of the movie, but I was reminded of how the president is demanding a Nobel Peace Prize without doing jack shit to earn it, or how Donald Jr. reportedly got his 2019 book, Triggered, on the best-seller lists through bulk purchases. In short, the Trumps are obsessed with accolades, and will, ironically, expend an enormous amount of energy trying to get them without doing the work instead of taking the simpler path — that of actually doing the work and living with the risk not earning them.

Melania ends with a list of her alleged achievements in onscreen text. I’ll leave it to the fact-checkers to assess whether she really did have any role in reuniting “children with their families displaced by the Russia-Ukraine War” or freeing Israeli hostages. Or if she really did secure $25 million in the federal budget for foster youth (in a regime which pushed millions of children into food insecurity). It’s all possible, but this is a family that swims in lies: Occam’s razor might suggest instead that Melania married for a life of leisure and wealth, and she is simply now desperate to convince us — or herself — that she is a person of talent and accomplishment.

Melania was pulled from every theatre in South Africa, reportedly for “political reasons.” More likely the distributors don’t have the bottomless pockets of a Jeff Bezos, and they saw no need to risk losing their shirts on a such a soulless vanity project.