The Melania Doc: What Was the Point?
This last February, Amazon released a nearly 2 hour long documentary feature film entitled Melania: Twenty Days to History, and it's safe to say it was a box office flop. With Amazon spending $40 million on the rights and $35 million on marketing and distribution, it grossed about $16.6 million worldwide. Critics had much to say though, despite its somewhat shallow discussions and reportedly boring structure. Many are asking what the point of Melania Trump's discourses over home decor and design were even for.
To start off, some have described the film as an effort to humanize the first lady and her family. The general premise of the film covers the 20 days leading up to Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration, focusing on Melania's arrangements for all that surrounded it. We essentially follow her as she travels throughout the world and country preparing for fittings, balls, and obviously scripted meetings. In fact, a decent chunk of the movie is simply about that one wide-brimmed hat she wore to the inauguration, a custom "boater" by Eric Javits. Within all the scenes centered around her high stakes outfits and personal designer, we hear Mrs. Trump express her wishes to change the role of the first lady. Rather than being all about official duties, she wanted to widen the role. Yet, we don't see much of that and ultimately find ourselves watching an empty vlog of her duties during those 20 days. At some point, Mrs. Trump gives hope for a meaningful conversation when she brings up her roots as an immigrant. However, her statements feel generic and devoid of the context surrounding the President's policies on the topic. "In the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity," she says. The sentiment is nice, but it's overshadowed by the directly opposing reality that her husband has created.
So what? So what the first lady made an expensive documentary about what she wears and the interactions with her family? Well, it's simply a superficial attempt at propaganda. The filmmakers wanted to create the vision of a hard working first lady and regular family in a pristinely presented manner. Melania's role as a wife and mother were presented to create a strong, controlled image, while she largely removed herself from any political concerns. Her status as a naturalized immigrant is brought up, assumingely to use to their advantage, but even that fell flat. This was also directed by Brett Ratner, a previously blacklisted director who has multiple accusations of sexual harassment. Considering a main criticism of this administration is its handling of the Epstein files, this put a sour taste in many reviewers' mouths.
Read more about it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/opinion/melania-film-review.html
Thank you for reviewing this! I love reality tv and every time I turn on my tv I was bombarded by advertisement's for this "documentary" and every time it left me so confused as to why we needed something like this in the first place. I have yet to watch is and thanks to your review I might never get to enjoy 2 hours of propaganda, which is exactly what I had expected when I first saw the brief trailer play in the background of my tv's Home Screen. I know that some presidents do post "propaganda' in a way that shows their humility and their love of the people but there is something to say about how she is preaching about the world as if her husband is not creating a very different reality. This was a very good topic to discuss and I think you did a great job at going in depth about the "why" rather than just the what.
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