Is Melania The Worst Film Ever Made?

Maybe, but it's definitely the worst film I've ever seen

Feb 01, 2026

∙ Paid

Now that every critic and their mom has taken vicious whacks at the fake documentary Melania, as if it were the village piñata, allow me to start off by saying something nice. I’ve always felt a certain kinship with Melania Trump. We were born within a month-and-a-half of each other, both under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Dog. (The Donald hates dogs. And the Chinese.) She’s from Slovenia, my paternal great-grandfather was from Russia. (Close enough, same hemisphere.) I like supermodels, she used to be one. (Or maybe not a supermodel, but she was a fairly swell model.) We both appear to detest her husband. I’ve been a bit more vocal about it. But a GIF is worth a thousand words:

Okay, end of niceness. As I was sitting in my local multiplex last Friday, with eight lonesome weirdos — I was there for work, but this was presumably their idea of fun — I thought that surely someone out there must have had a worse cinematic experience than I was having. Maybe the poor souls who went to see The Dark Knight Rises at that fateful Century 16 midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado, back in 2012? There, a 24-year-old nutcase shot the place up, injuring 70 and killing a dozen people. And yet, as I thought of that unlucky dozen, and all the life they were robbed of, I also considered that at least they’d never have to watch Melania. In that sense, they really dodged a bullet.

It’s perhaps unfair for me to call Melania the worst film ever made, since I haven’t seen every film ever made. But I have seen Porky’s 3, Police Academy 6, and many Rob Schneider vehicles, so you know I mean business when I say it’s the worst film I’ve ever seen.

And lest you think I’m an outlier, it’s the worst film a lot of other people have seen, too. Melania’s Rotten Tomatoes critics’ ranking, as of this writing, is at 10 percent. Making it less popular than the media, Congress, some venereal diseases, and even her husband’s tariff policy. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, its Popcornmeter/audience ranking is 99 percent, because MAGA cultists gotta cult, making that number as reliable as North Korean election returns.)

It’s no small wonder it’s taking such a drubbing. Melania is a personality-study of a person who doesn’t actually have one. Or rather, she is such a chilly approximation of a flesh-and-blood human being, that this feels less like a documentary than an industrial film about dry ice.

Of course, the very nature of its existence was a tip-off that creative merit would not be of paramount concern. My former colleague Charlie Sykes correctly called it a “docu-bribe,” while my old pal Sonny Bunch also detailed how virtually every facet of this film was steeped in some measure of sleaze: It was directed by Brett Ratner, a below-average talent, best known for Rush Hours 1-3 and Jessica Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” video. But who has spent the better part of the last decade in outer Siberia, after being blackballed for various MeToo sex scandals. Perhaps Ratner made Melania feel at home, since she already spends a lot of time in the company of a man who has been serially accused of scummy behavior towards women. Both men make cameos in the Epstein Files. And DJT has made a hard sell to his shine-boys, The Ellisons of Paramount Skydance, to greenlight Ratner directing Rush Hour 4, as if the world needed another one.

Likewise, Melania was financed by Lord Bezos in what many regard as a $75 million protection-racket payoff (between the film’s production/marketing costs, and the $28 million reportedly shelled out to Melania). You know, just in case Bezos’s burnt sacrifices of his Washington Post’s integrity and staffers weren’t a sweet enough offering in the Angry Orange-God’s nostrils.

What we’re left with then is a Frankenfilm, a cobbled-together mess of criminally uninteresting moments, suck-uppery, ham-handed propaganda, and lots of shoe shots. I didn’t count, but Good Lord, there has to be at least 20 shots of Melania’s heels. And to her credit, her pins might be her best feature, and are a lot nicer than her be-cankled husband’s. The problem being, the dead calfskin on her Manolo’s shows more signs of life than she does.

Trying to describe the film in any sort of linear fashion would be pointless, as a good chunk of it features an exacting-yet-dutifully-friendly Melania having dead-serious conversations about lapel and hat-band widths or gold-egg caviar table settings with her fleet of flouncy designers. Purportedly a behind-the-scenes deep-dive focusing on the twenty days of her life in the lead-up to Trump’s second inaugural, that conceit provides about as much of a dramatic engine as you’d expect. Which is to say, none.

Even most barely-passable dramas grapple with unresolved questions. But every question you could possibly ask here comes pre-resolved. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) Will Donald Trump be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States? (Yes.) Will lots of embarrassing courtiers, from Tim Cook to Mark Zuckerberg to Elon to Joe Rogan show up to inaugural galas to genuflect before the Dear Leader? (Yes.) Will Melania and Donald smile at the help, from their private jet crews to their White House butlers, proving once and for all that they really are just like us? (Yes!)

The problem, of course, with all this purported behind-the-scenes business, is that like so much of the Trump administration, which is constantly broadcasting itself everywhere at all times, these are mostly scenes we’ve already seen. It’s kind of like CNN, with more shoe close-ups.

Which is why, to really penetrate Melania’s interior life, such as it is, the film relies on a recurring series of voiceovers from Melania. They sound like they were written by ChatGPT, if ChatGPT were less warm, and for whom English was a second language. (Whoever actually wrote her voiceovers might not be known, since as Rolling Stone reported, two-thirds of Melania’s New York crew was embarrassed enough by having to work on the film that they asked not to be listed in the credits.)

Therefore, we are left with hilarious interjections that are pretty much the sole source of unintentional comic relief. Here’s a sampling, all delivered with Melania’s clockwork Slovenian timing:

With this film, I want to show the American people my journey. The transition from a private citizen to the first lady. Every day, I live with purpose and devotion, orchestrating the complexities of my life while nurturing my family’s needs. {Can’t you just visualize Melania slinging hash over a hot stove, while Donald sits at the kitchen table in his wife-beater, reading the morning fake news?}

My creative vision is always clear. And it’s my responsibility to share the idea with my team, so they can bring it to life.

My mother Amalija’s fashion talent and expertise cultivated my deep appreciation for great design. From her wisdom, I grew up to honor the craft, treasure the artistry, and respect the level of perfection required to create timeless pieces.

Being the First Lady requires managing many obligations. You have your own schedule, the White House schedule, and the President’s schedule. You need to be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend.

Donald Trump is in the film here and there, but nearly seems a secondary character. Sure, from Mar-a-Lago to the White House, he keeps Melania in the manner to which she’s become accustomed (now, easier than ever, since the New Yorker is reporting that Trump has raked in $4 billion while leveraging his presidency). But Trump doesn’t even rate a speaking part until 25 minutes in, after LOTS of fashion talk. Even then, it’s by phone, with him asking his wife if she’s seen his election returns and if she’s been watching (“I did not,” she tells him, “I had meetings all day……..I will see it on the news.”) Then he bludgeons her with braggadocio like he regularly does the rest of us (“Nothing like it has happened before, ever. It’s a landslide, that’s for sure.”)

You feel for Melania, for a second, wondering if her marital existence is a never-ending series of sitting through her hubby’s schwantz-measuring sessions. And then you remember, she asked for this! Back in the late nineties, when I was shadowing Trump (and Melania, then just his girlfriend) during one of Trump’s many presidential flirtations before he ran for real, Trump spoke at a Tony Robbins seminar, then did a Q&A with audience members. When a woman asked him for advice on how she could create capital, he responded, “Meet a wealthy guy.” I have no idea if the woman took his advice, but Melania seems to have internalized it. She went ahead and married one. And why not? If you can keep his short, vulgarian fingers off of you (which from the looks of the above GIF, and the kisses she mostly dodges in the film, Melania’s skilled at doing), it beats the hell out of selling auto parts back in Slovenia. Which is what her father used to do.

But on second thought, maybe I misspoke that there are no nearly-human moments. While attending Jimmy Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral, Melania takes to voicing-over how much she misses her mother, who died a year prior. She says, “I’m planning to go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral when I’m back in New York. I will honor her, light a candle for her. Have a quiet moment to myself.” And when she gets back to New York, that’s precisely what she does. She somberly treks to St. Patrick’s, just her, a retinue of priests who can’t wait to greet her, and her documentary crew. She lights a candle for her mother/the camera. She almost squeaks out a tear, but not quite. There is a fabulous shoe shot.

She also likes to cut loose now and then. I guess. While riding in her motorcade, director Ratner asks her who her favorite musical artist is. Michael Jackson, she says. She especially likes “Billie Jean.” (She goes for the deep cuts.) As “Billie Jean” plays, she starts singing it, along with Ratner, who caterwauls off-key and off-camera by her side. Just keeping it real.

And on third thought, maybe I was wrong too, that there are no unresolved questions driving the drama, as I’m contemplating some of Melania’s other voiceovers.

Now a naturalized citizen, Melania sings the glories of immigrants (who her husband is putting in detention camps and deporting, sometimes, even legal ones, while his masked goon squad has gunned down people who have protested their methods.) She speaks of the importance of overseeing “the White House operation, starting with the East Wing.” (The same East Wing that Trump utterly demolished with no consent or notice, so he can erect his big, beautiful ballroom.) She watches footage of the L.A. fires, saying, “It is impossible to see these images and not be horrified of the utter devastation and catastrophic loss.” Though her husband managed. He blamed it on Gavin “Newscum” and all those California whack-jobs who didn’t vote for him. She says, “I will always use my influence and power to fight for those in need,” as the President cuts the hell out of Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act subsidies, and many other programs that kind of help people in need.

There are many more instances throughout the film, in which it’s evident that while Melania is forever aware of the camera, she’s completely un-self-aware. And so, I am left with one unresolved question:

Is she familiar with her husband’s work?

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Is Melania The Worst Film Ever Made?

Maybe, but it's definitely the worst film I've ever seen

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