By Abigail Brandwein
On January 30th, 2026, Melania Trump released a self-titled movie. The documentary film follows Trump through the White House within the 20 days before her husband’s second inauguration.
Melania has a 40 million dollar budget, bids from numerous streaming channels, is headed towards a follow-up docuseries, and performed well in the box office–it grossed between 7 and 8 million dollars in its opening weekend. For producers, the documentary exceeded expectations. But for critics, the movie flopped.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, a renowned movie reviewing site, Melania received an 8% rate of positive feedback from critics. Simultaneously, on IMDb the film scored a 1.3/10, attesting to the criticism it received from a standpoint of production value.
Overall, the movie’s reviews are horrible, typically condemning the cinematography as astonishingly dull. Furthermore, critics dismiss Trump’s struggle story as an immigrant, which much of the documentary revolved around, due to recent government xenophobia and ICE controversy. The New York Times called the film a “$40 million piece of propaganda”.
But despite overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, the movie received a 99% viewer satisfaction rating, highlighting positive public response. According to Rolling Stone, Melania has attained the widest critic-audience disparity in Rotten Tomatoes history.
The reason for the dramatic gap is the demographic that watched the movie. Melania only did well in red, Republican areas such as Dallas or Phoenix. Of the 99% who liked the movie, around 80% were white, and around 75% were 55 or older.
Amongst IHS students, it was difficult to find an opinion as most students had not watched the documentary and had no intentions to do so.
“I haven’t seen it and I’m not going to,” said junior Zoya Bhandari. “I don’t want to watch anything associated with Trump.”
Those who don’t support Melania Trump or her husband’s policies weren’t inclined to watch the movie at all. In fact, in lieu of supporting the Trump family, during the release weekend of Melania, a massive 13000% surge in viewership was shifted towards Michelle Obama’s Netflix documentary, Becoming.
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