Review: Made of car rides and cold silences, 'Melania' is so polished it slips out of the first lady's hands

I’m hesitant to call “Melania” propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well.If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed.

Yet somehow, “Melania” is exactly the film that the first lady wanted to make — her company was paid $40 million for the rights to this self-greenlit production — and no one around her warned that it was a very expensive bad idea.“Melania” didn’t screen for critics and, of the dozen people in my AMC theater on opening day last Friday, half of us were journalists paying to play catch-up.Introducing “Melania” at its Kennedy Center premiere the night before, the lead herself insisted that it is not a documentary but a “very deliberate act of authorship inviting you to witness events and emotions through a window of rich imagery.” Mostly, it’s B-roll of Melania stepping in and out of SUVs.

My best guess is her pay rate is a million dollars an hour.The president is effusive the first time that he greets his wife on an airplane tarmac alongside the film crew.“A movie star!” Trump says with a grin.

He has a couple reasons to sound happy.For one, he’s getting to actually make public eye contact with his wife.

As a bonus, she even offers up her cheek for a peck, which is as affectionate as things get between them.With the same queenly beneficence she grants her husband, Melania has allowed the long-out-of-work director Brett Ratner (this is his first film since six women accused him of sexual assault in 2017) access to film her in tightly constrained snippets until the day after her return to the White House.

It is 2025 and Trump will be sworn back into office as the 47th president of the U.S.in 20 days — or is it 13? One attempts to measure the passage of time in her outfit changes — a white jacket, shiny black leggings, ...