{"id":281050,"date":"2026-02-04T22:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281050\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T22:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:49:07","slug":"melania-is-a-rubbish-film-of-course-the-man-who-defunded-the-arts-loves-it-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281050\/","title":{"rendered":"Melania is a rubbish film. Of course the man who defunded the arts loves it | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has anyone seen Melania<\/a> (the film) yet? I have. I went to watch it on Friday morning. The idea was to interview other people watching the movie: to get a sense of why they wanted to see it, how they felt about Melania, how weird they were, etc.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t really work that well in the end, because most of the crowd at the AMC in midtown Manhattan were journalists trying to do the exact same thing as me. As far as I could tell, three non-reporters attended our showing. Of the two who agreed to talk to me, one was there because he had a monthly movie theater pass, and the other was a man who, without wanting to be too unkind, had a very low bar for compelling drama<\/a>. (\u201cI think it\u2019s interesting just to kind of see, you know, how her life really is, at least to some extent,\u201d this person told me.)<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding my sparsely attended screening and photos of empty theaters on social media, a surprising number of other people watched the film. Melania earned $7m over its opening weekend. (Amazon spent $75m making and promoting the film.)<\/p>\n

Melania also managed to record those numbers despite being demonstrably bad. Like, really rubbish.<\/p>\n

Regrettably for the subject of a documentary, Melania Trump<\/a> is not an interesting person. There are no real insights to take away from the movie because she doesn\u2019t seem to do anything. In a scripted voiceover which rears up throughout the movie, Melania describes herself as \u201ca mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend\u201d, but based on the evidence of her film, she has no friends. She moves from one stilted, awkward conversation with her staff to another, all parties seeming uncomfortable with each other as they discuss how tightly a scarf should fit and whether a hat is big enough.<\/p>\n

There is little to be seen of Donald Trump in the movie, although in one of the few compelling scenes, we hear him on the phone to Melania, talking to his wife like he talks to Fox News, all \u201cbig\u201d numbers and \u201crecord\u201d wins. Unlike Fox News hosts, Melania gives her husband short shrift, umming and ah-ing her way through the call before essentially hanging up.<\/p>\n

Ahead of its release, Donald Trump described the movie as \u201cunforgettable\u201d<\/a> and \u201ca must watch\u201d<\/a> \u2013 two easily debunked claims \u2013 but the president having poor taste in movies is hardly surprising, given his approach to the arts mostly seems to involve shutting them down.<\/p>\n

Donald and Melania Trump at the Melania film premiere in Washington DC on 29 January 2026 at the Kennedy Center. Photograph: Laura Thompson\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The White House held the premiere for Melania at the Kennedy Center on Thursday. Rather than being a who\u2019s who, the guestlist was a veritable \u201cWho Is That?<\/a>\u201d, with invitees including Pete Anthony Sciarrino III (described in news reports as a \u201csocial media magician\u201d), a slew of Florida-based socialites, and reality TV stars turned convicted fraudsters Todd and Julie Chrisley (Trump pardoned<\/a> the pair last year).<\/p>\n

Also bumping up the numbers at the premiere: almost all of Trump\u2019s cabinet, presumably attending because they were really keen to watch a 1 hour and 48 minute movie about how their boss\u2019s wife unsettles almost everyone she encounters, rather than attending out of obligation.<\/p>\n

For all Trump\u2019s love of the movie \u2013 he claims to have watched it twice \u2013 it doesn\u2019t seem to have altered his slash-and-burn approach to arts patronage and funding. Three days after the screening, he announced<\/a> that he would close down the Kennedy Center for two years, in order to bring it to the \u201chighest level of success, beauty, and grandeur\u201d, which presumably means adding gold leaf and putting his name on the front.<\/p>\n

Curiously, Trump\u2019s announcement came after many performers cancelled planned shows in response to the president\u2019s government and his takeover of the Kennedy Center \u2013 which saw it rebranded the Trump-Kennedy Center and led to ticket sales plunging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If that move seems to have been born out of a fit of pique, perhaps it shouldn\u2019t have come as a surprise, given Trump has assailed the arts since taking office.<\/p>\n

He has canceled more than 1,000<\/a> grants to arts groups while cutting funding to some museums and attempting to reshape the tone of others<\/a>. He has sued television networks, and tried to get them to cancel<\/a> the shows of hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel, a critic of the Trump administration. Just this week, Trump claimed<\/a> he would sue Trevor Noah after the comedian made a joke about the president at the Grammys.<\/p>\n

Architecture hasn\u2019t escaped the president either: he has bulldozed the East Wing of the White House to build a big ballroom, prompting preservationists to sue out of concern the new structure could clash with the original building. Inside the White House, Trump has slathered the Oval Office with gold, while down the road he is hoping to build a gigantic arch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is it any surprise that in a movie that\u2019s as bland as one of Trump\u2019s well-done steaks, as insipid as one of his soliloquies about how he washes his hair<\/a>, the president has finally found a piece of art he doesn\u2019t want to destroy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has anyone seen Melania (the film) yet? I have. I went to watch it on Friday morning. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-281050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}