Based on early ticket sales, excitement for a new documentary about Melania Trump is set somewhere between “Bolero” and “The Nutcracker in 3D.”
You think her husband is narcoleptic during cabinet meetings? Just wait until the premiere of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center on Thursday. The doofus-in-chief will be forced to jam toothpicks between his eyelids for one hour and 44 minutes.
Amazon MGM Studios did not send advance screeners to critics. This was wise. The trailer alone made me doze off into my Cheerios. The secondary title — “Twenty Days to History” — sounds like a threat, especially when it consists of Melania pushing elevator buttons, endorsing stationary and mumbling bromides: “Together with like-minded leaders, we have a voice.”
Yes. Unfortunately, you need AI to understand her voice.
This is the world’s first trailer comprised entirely of B-roll fast cuts.
The doc opens in theatres on Friday. Snagging a ticket will be easier than driving into a Mr. Lube bay. I checked for advance tickets at the Scotiabank Theatre and you can pretty much get any seat for any of the four showings on Friday.
Bring a sleeping bag. You will be the only person in the theatre.
There were two questions since the project was announced last year: 1. Why would anyone want to watch a film about a woman who has the charisma of a Chia Pet? 2. Who would spend millions to finance such cinematography misery?
The answer to No. 2 is Jeff Bezos. He licensed the rights for $40 million (U.S.), while chipping in another $35 million on marketing. If the young Bezos who started Amazon in his garage could time travel, he’d go to 2025 and punch the older Bezos in the mouth for being such a slimy sellout.
And this is why the world needs “Melania” to bomb at the box office.
We don’t need bad reviews. We need empty theatres. We need 0 scores on Rotten Tomatoes. We need the humiliating failure of one glossy hagiography to send a lights, camera, action lesson to the misguided broligarchs like Bezos who have enabled Trump 2.0 with glib indifference to the world order.
There was a private screening of “Melania” at the White House on Saturday, the same day ICU nurse Alex Pretti was barbarically shot dead by ICE agents who should not have access to sharp pencils, let alone guns. And who showed up? Apple’s Tim Cook. This was so tone-deaf there was a call to boycott Apple. And, somewhere, Steve Jobs suppressed a gag reflex as he lamented the Faustian bargain made by his skittish and unworthy successor.
I was heartened this week to read that early “Melania” sales are “soft.”
One British theatre said only one advance ticket had been sold and possibly to someone who thinks the film is an ascetic meditation about Saint Melania the Elder. In Australia this weekend, you have a better chance of getting fatally stung by a box jellyfish than encountering someone in a “Melania” theatre. In Japan, where you can buy a camouflage watch or used underwear from a vending machine, interest in the first lady is kyoumi nai.
Bezos does not see “Melania” as prestige content. He sees it as a mood ring, something he can slip on his finger and flash around the White House to feign loyalty and fealty to a venal cause.
A box-office flop will make Bezos realize his long-term bet on bootlicking is shaping up to be bust. MAGA merch shops are going out of business faster than record stores after Y2K. This is both a bellwether and a weather vane.
If the red hats are no longer keen to buy a decorative spoon with Trump’s mug shot, they won’t be attending “Melania.” And that means nobody will.
Thursday’s premiere at the Kennedy Center may be the only sold-out showing. And that’s because invitees must attend like Kim Jong Un zombies at a missile launch.
So Kristi Noem will arrive on the red carpet dressed as Bette Davis while carrying a wanted poster for Dora the Explorer. Pete Hegseth will sit in the last row and swig from a hip flask while pelting Dr. Oz with popcorn. Kash Patel will bring his resting face that always looks like someone smacked him upside the head with a Styrofoam bat.
“Melania” can’t just fade into cultural oblivion. It needs to fail spectacularly. It needs to be a box office buster bunker until the broligarchs take the hint and stop volunteering for the cowardly lion roles in Trump’s Wizard of Oz and realize their time as quislings is coming to an end sooner than expected.
Jeff Bezos may not care about $75 million. That’s chump change when your new bride has necklaces that cost more. But he will care about being outed as a media mogul with no game and vision.
He will care when he finally realizes Trump 2.0 is a losing bet.
