Melania, the Amazon MGM Studios documentary about America’s current First Lady, Melania Trump, has managed to get an 11% critics’ score sitting alongside a 98% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It is the kind of statistical anomaly that raises eyebrows, questions, and more than a few accusations.
Rotten Tomatoes itself felt compelled to issue a statement, insisting there had been “NO manipulation” of audience reviews. The capitalization tells you everything about the suspicion swirling around those numbers. When a film polarizes this severely, someone always cries foul.
Directed by Brett Ratner—whose résumé includes Rush Hour and a string of industry controversies—Melania tracks its subject, Melania Trump, across the 20 days leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration. It is a steep price tag for intimacy—$40 million, to be precise, which Amazon handed over for what was billed as “unprecedented access.” Over the course of 105 minutes, the camera lingers on the minutiae of a return to power: the logistics of the inauguration, the domestic shuffle back into the White House, and the guarded dynamics of one of the most dissected marriages on the planet.
Melania Documentary!
Another success 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/APobwIOvhj
— ✞🎀TrumpGirlOnFire 🔥 (@TrumpGirlOnFire) February 5, 2026
What the critics saw, however, was something closer to expensive wallpaper. Some critics dismissed the Melania Trump film as offering nothing beyond “a quick Wikipedia search,” while the Detroit News branded it “numbingly, agonizingly dull.” The professional verdict was less a critique than a demolition. A reviewer for Kermode and Mayo’s Take didn’t just dislike it; they called it “the most depressing experience I have ever had in the cinema”—which is quite a bar to clear.
The Daily Telegraph went further, conjuring a wonderfully bleak image of the film’s atmosphere: “The whole vibe is eerily off from start to finish, leaving you feeling as if you’ve spent 105 minutes alone on a merry-go-round in an abandoned amusement park.” It is the kind of review that usually kills a movie stone dead, especially a portrait of someone as polarizing as Melania Trump.
But step away from the broadsheets and onto the user forums, and you find a completely different reality. Ordinary viewers were penning rapturous praise for Melania and, by extension, for Melania Trump herself. “What a great film! Very well made movie. The music was energetic too,” one wrote. Another declared Melania “the classiest flotus EVER”, their enthusiasm spilling into capital letters and exclamation marks. For many, the documentary wasn’t just entertainment—it was vindication.
apart from this it was a fantastic cinematic experience
https://t.co/kDEzzopgqr pic.twitter.com/wyM3pAHLw5
— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway3d) January 30, 2026
The fan reviews often carried a defensive edge, suggesting the high scores were a form of protest on behalf of Melania Trump. One viewer argued the film existed precisely because “the mainstream media chooses to either ignore her accomplishments or paint her in a negative light.” Another framed it as relief: “So proud (and relieved) to have President Trump restoring law and order to our county.” The parenthetical “relieved” does a lot of heavy lifting there.
Box office figures, however, tell a less triumphant story for Melania and for the idea that Melania Trump alone can carry a global theatrical release. The film opened with a respectable $7.2 million across the U.S., enough for Amazon to add 500 screens. But the momentum didn’t hold. By Sunday, it had tumbled from third place to tenth. The second weekend saw a 67% drop domestically—and a brutal 88% collapse in the U.K., where it slid to number 62. For a project released across 26 countries with a reported $35 million marketing spend, those numbers sting.
Before its public debut, the Melania Trump documentary enjoyed a White House screening dinner attended by Queen Rania of Jordan, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Mike Tyson. That mix of guests—tech royalty dining alongside a heavyweight champion—suggests a production desperate to be taken seriously, or at least seen.
MELANIA, the film
“I authored the story you are about to experience with purpose: the charm of laughter, the tenderness of transparency, and the determination to break new ground.” pic.twitter.com/kvcrJA9cZ6
— FLOTUS Report (@MELANIAJTRUMP) January 30, 2026
Ultimately, Melania has become a proxy war. To the critics, it is a hollow vanity project built around Melania Trump; to the faithful, it is a corrective to history. Rarely do we see a cultural product slice an audience so neatly down the middle, proving that in 2026, we aren’t just watching different movies—we are living in different worlds, each with its own version of who Melania Trump is and what she represents.
