{"id":118284,"date":"2026-01-31T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T11:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118284\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T11:59:10","slug":"melania-the-ice-queens-75-million-snoozefest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118284\/","title":{"rendered":"Melania: The Ice Queen\u2019s $75 million snoozefest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rtejustify\">If you were hoping for a tell-all explosive look at life inside the most chaotic White House in history, don&#8217;t hold your breath. For when we took the call to watch &#8216;Melania: 20 Days to History&#8217;, the most exciting incident we found was a debate over a shirt collar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">While the rest of the world is watching the news, Melania Trump is busy picking out fabric samples. This film, directed by Brett Ratner and funded by a massive deal with Amazon, almost around $75 million including film rights and marketing budget, is less of a documentary and more of a high-end catalogue for a lifestyle none of us can afford. It&#8217;s supposed to show us the &#8220;real&#8221; Melania in the run-up to the 2025 inauguration, but it feels more like watching a mannequin through a shop window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">The invisible family<\/p>\n<p>        <a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #2b4949; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; font-size: 18px;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMIivlQsw2ZKrAw?ceid=US:en&amp;oc=3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n          <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tbsnews.net\/sites\/all\/themes\/sloth\/images\/google_news.svg\" alt=\"The Business Standard Google News\" style=\"display: inline-block; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px; height: 30px;\"\/><br \/>\n            Keep updated, follow The Business Standard&#8217;s Google news channel<br \/>\n          <\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">The film kicks off with Melania telling us, &#8220;Everyone wants to know, so here it is.&#8221; But what follows is surprisingly little. We spend a lot of time in cars and private jets, traveling between the gold-plated luxury of Trump Tower and the sunshine of Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">There are a few &#8220;human&#8221; moments, but they feel carefully staged. We learn that she loves Michael Jackson\u2014specifically Billie Jean, which she hums along to in the back of a limo. When the director asks if they are doing &#8220;Carpool Karaoke,&#8221; the vibe is more frozen out than fun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">As the film ends, Melania tells the camera that &#8220;the real nobility is becoming stronger&#8221; than the person she was yesterday.&#8221; It&#8217;s a nice line, but after 90 minutes of watching her look at dinner plates, you&#8217;ll probably just feel tired. Amazon might have paid around $75 million for this, but as a viewer, you might feel like you&#8217;ve paid far too much in time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">What&#8217;s most striking is who isn&#8217;t in the film. The wider Trump family is practically invisible. Her son, Barron, is mentioned with a mother&#8217;s affection\u2014she says, &#8220;It is very important that he lives the life he wants to live&#8221;\u2014but the boy himself can&#8217;t get away from the cameras fast enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">He&#8217;s seen walking away from the family as they enter the White House, looking like he&#8217;d rather be anywhere else. Even the President is mostly a background character, popping in to brag about his crowd sizes or moan that his big day is being overshadowed by a football game.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">&#8220;They probably did it on purpose,&#8221; he rants, sounding less like a world leader and more like a guy who&#8217;s had his weekend ruined.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">The Ice Queen in a world on fire<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">The timing of this film is what has really ruffled feathers. While Melania is shown agonising over whether a tablecloth is the right shade of cream, the streets of America were filled with protesters following fatal shootings in Minneapolis.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">Critics have labelled the project insensitive and tone deaf, and it&#8217;s hard to disagree when you see her hosting a fancy White House party for tech billionaires while the country is in turmoil.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">There is a brief moment where the mask slips.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">When she talks about her mother, Amalija Knavs, who passed away in 2024, you can see genuine sadness. She calls her mother the &#8220;richest thread&#8221; of her life. It&#8217;s the only time she feels like a person instead of a brand. She&#8217;s seen lighting a candle at a cathedral, a quiet moment in a film that is otherwise very loud about how much money it costs to make.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">But then, it&#8217;s back to business.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">Melania talks about the &#8216;language of details&#8217; she shares with her stylist. They spend ages discussing a tiny fraction of an inch on a suit. She seems far more comfortable talking about silk and seams than she does about politics. She admits the role of First Lady is more structured than she&#8217;d like and that she has to stay mentally strong to deal with the loss of her privacy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">In the end, the film feels like a very expensive attempt to control the narrative. She echoes her husband&#8217;s claims of unfair treatment, saying, &#8220;Nobody has endured what he has for the last few years.&#8221; It&#8217;s a message for the fans, but for the rest of us, it&#8217;s a bit of a snooze-fest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">As the film ends with her boogying along to YMCA at a ball, she tells the camera that &#8220;the real nobility is becoming stronger&#8221; than the person she was yesterday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">It&#8217;s a nice line, but after 90 minutes of watching her look at dinner plates, you&#8217;ll probably just feel tired. Amazon might have paid around $75 million for this, but as a viewer, you might feel like you&#8217;ve paid far too much in time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were hoping for a tell-all explosive look at life inside the most chaotic White House in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-118284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}