Melania
The reviews are in...
Come for the headlines:
- Via Variety: ‘Melania’ Review: Brett Ratner’s First Lady Documentary Is a Cheeseball Infomercial of Staggering Inertia. There’s no drama to a film that should have been called “Day of the Living Tradwife.”
- Via The Hollywood Reporter: ‘Melania’ Review: Brett Ratner’s Melania Trump Documentary Is an Unabashed, Fly-on-the-Gilded-Wall Fawn Job.
- Via The Independent: Melania review – First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.
- Also The Independent: I watched ‘Melania’ on opening day in a near-empty movie theater. Why I did is just one of the many questions I was left with.
Stay for the reminder that this movie feels like a bribe in plain sight.
For example, from The Verge: Melania documentary creators say its big price tag wasn’t bribery.
The makers of Amazon’s Melania documentary have defended its exorbitant cost following accusations of bribery to appease the Trump empire. Amazon paid $40 million to Melania Trump’s production company for the film rights and another $35 million for marketing — making it one of the most expensive documentaries ever produced.
[…]
That budget is, actually, pretty unheard of for a documentary, sparking criticism that it’s a $75 million bribe. The New York Times notes that the $35 million marketing budget for Melania is 10 times higher than the average spend for big documentaries, despite only taking 20 days to shoot. The first lady herself is expected to personally pocket $27 million from Amazon’s $40 million licensing deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
See also, Axios: Boston theaters are empty for the Melania documentary. As well as via The Hollywood Reporter: Box Office: ‘Melania’ Heading for Surprise $8 Million Opening in North America.
I wonder if any Amazon shareholders will attempt a lawsuit against the firm.
It’s the must-miss hit of the season!
There’s a long tradition of partisans bulk buying, the books of politicians, I wonder how many of those $8M in tickets resulted in still empty seats.
I’ve avoided any of the reviews, but do feel bad for those that had a professional obligation to see the movie, but at least they were being paid and expensed the admission fee.
@Sleeping Dog:
I had a similar thought.
When it gets to streaming, the oligarchs can set up their data centers so all their fancy gear streams this title nonstop 24/7. It’ll get a trillion views.
@Sleeping Dog: I checked my local Cinemark theater in our Republican Houston suburb. About 25-50% of the tickets were sold across 8 showing times. However, the theatre size was about 40 seats.
I was dying at some comments I saw. One was “I had two free tickets to Melania on my dashboard, someone smashed my windshield and left two more tickets….” Lmao.
Seen a bunch of places: “If this were an in-flight movie people would still walk out.”