It’s darkly fitting that “Melania,” the new $75 million snoozefest from Amazon about America’s first lady, was released in theaters the same day her husband’s Justice Department dropped 3 million pages of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. As we now know, Epstein and Donald Trump were bosom buddies for years, and the grim specter of that relationship hangs over “Melania.”
The movie’s director is Brett Ratner, who six women accused of sexual assault or harassment in 2017, including one alleged victim who was 19 at the time. Ratner has been biding his time in Israel, where he has reportedly become friendly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In what one would hope is enough to undo Amazon’s $35 million “Melania” marketing budget, Ratner is also in the new batch of Epstein files: There are photos of him and Epstein embracing two women whose identities are redacted. An earlier Epstein document dump included a photo where Ratner hugs the shirtless torso of Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling agent and Epstein associate who died in prison facing multiple charges of rape and sexual assault, including of a minor under the age of 15.
It’s hard not to watch “Melania” with all that context top of mind. It’s a big, nasty club, and we’re not in it, thankfully.
This film opens by putting too fine a point on all of it. The camera pans expansively over the ocean and the beach before arriving at Mar-a-Lago and Melania Trump’s red-bottomed heels. She boards a motorcade to travel to New York City, and the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” plays: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.” (That song was famously used to great effect in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” and “Goodfellas,” films in which criminal psychopaths meet their demise after stealing and assaulting everyone in sight in service of personal enrichment and their depraved sense of morality.)
What follows is an hour and 44-minute-long lifestyle infomercial about a public figure with all the charisma and intrigue of eggshell-white paint drying. (We are reminded multiple times throughout the movie, as a tie-in with its marketing campaign, that the first lady loves the colors black and white, which are also the colors of Regal Cinemas’ novelty popcorn bucket for its release.)
Melania is seen trying on a multitude of outfits ahead of her husband’s second inauguration, with festivities that include no fewer than three different balls, along with a ghoul-studded candlelight dinner. At that fete, the president’s table is a who’s who of his donors and scions of industry: There are three separate shots of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez. Bezos sits next to Miriam Adelson, the arch-conservative megadonor, and Trump cheerleader Elon Musk is there, too, caught on video as a brunette swoops in to sit on his lap. (For his part, Musk is also in the latest tranche of Epstein emails, asking the sex trafficker in November 2012, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”) Mark Zuckerberg, whose company, Meta, donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration fund, doesn’t appear until the inauguration luncheon, but he still shows up.
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Melania glides over it all, her unlined face impassive and unaffected, which creates a genuinely disquieting effect. Rather than an intimate portrait of a misunderstood woman — tellingly, the tagline for the movie is simply “A new film,” which is about as much as you can truthfully say about it — we’re treated to platitude after platitude in voiceover narration by the first lady.
Melania admits she’s a fan of AI; The audiobook of her memoir, also called “Melania,” is read by an AI replica of her voice. Most of her lukewarm observations feel like they could be AI-generated as well. Among them are statements so generic they achieve utter meaninglessness: “I felt the weight of history,” “Freedom is not free,” and “I honor the importance of the White House.” Describing the coat she wore for the inauguration, she states: “I want to feel like it’s a coat.” “Melania” is a stunning document, if only for its ability to say so little despite what we’re informed is unprecedented access.
“Melania” is a stunning document, if only for its ability to say so little despite what we’re informed is unprecedented access.
“Everyone wants to know” what it’s like becoming first lady again, Melania says early on in the movie. But if early ticket sales are any indication against its massively bloated budget, she has a generous definition of “everyone.” I saw the movie on opening night at Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, admittedly far from MAGA America, with a mere nine strangers. Other than a few “ooohs” from my seatmate when Melania tried on a new dress, only the appearance of her husband got any reaction from the assembled faithful, who laughed easily whenever Trump said anything. The biggest laugh came from shots of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris waiting out of public view before the inauguration, where Harris’s face is furrowed in disbelief, and of the mad dash to move out anything the Bidens might have touched before the Trumps arrive back at the White House.
The first time Melania and Trump are onscreen together, he greets her as she disembarks from a private jet emblazoned with TRUMP in all-capital letters. It appears that they’re going to shake hands before ultimately pivoting to an embrace. Their warmth is captured elsewhere, like when Trump calls his wife to tell her the final Electoral College totals that usher him into the White House once again. “That’s a good one,” Melania says without mirth. “Bye, congrats.”
All other efforts to humanize Melania fall similarly flat. You can practically see the boxes being checked off as they’re fulfilled on screen. She is a mother who bizarrely praises Barron Trump’s “composure” and calls him “very confident” as the song “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” plays. (On the campaign trail in 2016, Donald Trump memorably referred to Barron as “her son.”)
“Being hand in hand with my husband in this moment is very emotional,” she tells us in voiceover. “Nobody has endured what he has over the past few years. People tried to murder him, incarcerate him, slander him, and here he is. I’m so very proud.”
The lack of self-awareness is positively nauseating, and this feeling is only moderated slightly by the sheer tediousness of approving table designs, invitations, and other window-dressing.
Melania also cares deeply about “the children.” (It is perhaps worth noting that she began her modeling career at 16.) On a video call with French first lady Brigitte Macron where she talks about her “Be Best” anti-bullying initiative, she makes the note “no phones till 11,” a Macron recommendation, on a “Be Best”-branded notepad (Bezos for some reason is also seen on screen as part of the call, which goes unremarked upon.) While watching news coverage of the Los Angeles wildfires, a vaguely misty-eyed Melania says in voiceover, “I think about the families, the children who have lost everything.” Crucially, this sympathy does not seem to extend to children killed by her husband’s bombs in Gaza.
Melania at one point meets with an Israeli woman, Aviva Siegel, who was captured on October 7 and held hostage by Hamas. She was initially freed but forced to leave her husband, Keith, behind. (He was released on February 1, 2025, as part of the ceasefire deal.) “I would pray that he doesn’t suffer,” Melania tells her, with all the sympathy of a woman eyeing a damaged piece of produce. “I will always use my influence and power to fight for those in need,” she sums up the experience in voiceover.
But Ratner goes to great lengths to convince us that Melania is also fun, even a little goofy. This does not work in the slightest. At a victory event with Trump supporters at the D.C. Capital One Arena, Melania is seen dancing ever-so-slightly to the Trump campaign mainstay “YMCA,” but only as she leaves the stage; Trump does not join in. From behind sunglasses in a black SUV, Melania tells us, somewhat concerningly, that Michael Jackson is her favorite musician, and that she and Donald met him in New York. “Billie Jean” plays on the car’s sound system, and Melania lightly sings along, including to the line, “Be careful of who you love,” but any deeper meaning is lost on all parties involved.
Moments like these have led some to fall for the gag, and even to suggest that Ratner is making a slyly anti-Trump movie, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s a sycophant to his core, after Melania and Trump finally return to the White House after a great many parties, Ratner coos from off-camera: “Sweet dreams, Mr. President.”
(As a reward for his obsequiousness, Ratner is slated to direct “Rush Hour 4,” the buddy-cop series that’s reportedly being revived after Trump personally leaned on Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter and media mogul who now owns Paramount, which is set to distribute the film.)
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As the movie mercifully draws to a close, Melania once again returns to the children, who are our future. “With the celebrations behind us, the first day of my husband’s second term has arrived. There is much to accomplish in the next four years,” she says like a threat. “Children will always remain my priority. … I will move forward with purpose and, of course, with style.”
Moving forward, of course, means a regime of mass deportation and the trampling of our civil rights, all right in front of our faces. Her husband has ushered in an era where the unencumbered American id rules, one in which avarice, flagrant corruption, and clear bribery are the animating forces of a nation and a people. In that sense, the vacuousness of “Melania” perfectly captures the meaner, more selfish world we live in now. After all, it’s always been about Trump — not us, and certainly not Melania — despite any $75 million effort to convince us otherwise.
The post “Melania” Is as Vacuous as Its Subject appeared first on The Intercept.
