The Guardian reviews Melania documentary "with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal" LOL hilarious review

[mnhtnbb]

My audience with Melania is booked for Friday lunchtime at a retail park on the outskirts of Bristol, inside a large cinema which appears to have been swept and emptied in readiness. When Brett Ratner’s contentious, Amazon-backed documentary previewed at the White House last weekend, the guestlist included Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and the president himself. Today it’s just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair.

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.

No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.

It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government. “White and gold – that’s so you,” purrs one of her lickspittles as she busies herself with the colour-scheme for the ball and the incoming first lady allows that yes indeed, this is true.

The full review: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jan/30/melania-review-trump-film-is-a-gilded-trash-remake-of-the-zone-of-interest

[mnhtnbb]

1. Only the Brits can write like this!

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[viva la]

3. And of course she chose another predator as the director--

putting more Bezos $$$ into the pockets of the disgraced filmmaker.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. "White and gold -- that's so you!"

Orange Goldbrick, too.

[2naSalit]

5. I like this part...

" “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.

"

[mnhtnbb]

7. Me, too!

[JCMach1]

6. Triumph of the Shrill

[lame54]

8. Someday in the distant future it will be a midnight movie...

Like Ed Wood

[struggle4progress]

9. 'Harmful or fatal if ingested. If swallowed, do not watch Melania: Contact poison control center immediately"