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.
