The new documentary “Melania” arrived with a big-name director, a massive streaming deal, and the built-in intrigue of centering on Melania Trump. Instead of prestige buzz, it is now sitting in the cinematic penalty box with a single-digit Rotten Tomatoes score and some of the harshest reviews of the year. For a film that set out to define a former First Lady’s image, the early verdict is that it has mostly defined how quickly a high-profile project can flame out.
Critics have panned the movie’s execution, audiences are sharply divided, and the numbers behind the rollout suggest a very expensive misread of what viewers actually wanted from a Melania Trump story. The result is a case study in how political celebrity, online fandom, and old-school box office math collide when a documentary becomes a culture-war object before the opening weekend is even over.
How “Melania” Was Sold As A Prestige Event
On paper, “Melania” looked like the kind of glossy political documentary that could dominate awards-season chatter. The film is directed by Brett Ratner, the “Rush Hour” filmmaker whose name alone signals a certain Hollywood scale, and it was positioned as an intimate look at Melania Trump’s world rather than a standard campaign chronicle. Coverage of the project has repeatedly identified Ratner as the creative force behind Directed “Melania,” framing it as a big-screen extension of his commercial instincts.
The movie focuses tightly on the 20 days in January 2025 that led up to Melania Trump’s humanitarian initiative, a period that is presented as a turning point in how she uses her platform inside Donald Trump’s orbit. Reporting on the rollout notes that the film was released in 1,778 theaters nationwide, an unusually wide berth for a political documentary and a sign that its backers believed there was mainstream appetite for a feature-length portrait of Melania Trump that could play like a political thriller.
A Single-Digit Splash On Rotten Tomatoes
Once critics actually saw “Melania,” the numbers turned brutal. The film quickly landed in single digits on Rotten Tomatoes, with one early snapshot pegging the score at a humiliating 8 percent and describing how the documentary “crashes and burns” with reviewers. That same assessment highlighted that the project had already been flagged as a major flop despite the attention, noting that the low rating on Rotten Tomatoes was already shaping the narrative around the movie.
Other coverage framed the reception in similarly stark terms, pointing out that “Melania” had landed single-digit Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores and grouping it with some of the most critically savaged political films in recent memory. One breakdown of the early response emphasized that the project, simply titled Melania, had “Lands Single” “Digit Rotten Tomatoes” “Metacritic Scores,” a rare double whammy that signaled near-universal critical rejection.
Worse Than “Cats,” And That Is Saying Something
If there is a shorthand for modern critical disaster, it is “Cats.” So when reviewers started noting that “Melania” had actually scored worse than that infamous adaptation, the comparison stuck. One detailed look at the numbers pointed out that “Cats” managed a 19 percent rating on the Tomatometer, while “Melania” was sitting below that mark based on a small but scathing pool of early reviews, making its Tomatometer showing even more dire.
Another account of the reaction described how the documentary’s rotten score, based on 15 reviews as of late Friday evening, had already cemented its reputation as a misfire, with critics calling the film “so expected and utterly pointless” and grouping it with other high-profile flops. That same piece noted that Other critics were similarly disgusted, reinforcing the sense that the low score was not a statistical fluke but a consensus.
Big Money, Bigger Expectations, Tiny Payoff
The sting of those reviews is sharper because of how much money was riding on “Melania.” Reports on the deal describe how Amazon MGM paid around $40 million to acquire the project and then poured another $35 million into marketing, a combined outlay that was also summarized as $40 m and $35 m in shorthand. That level of investment, detailed in coverage that opened with the phrase “Despite Amazon MGM,” signaled that the studio saw the documentary as a marquee title rather than a niche political curiosity, especially with a planned Prime Video rollout after the theatrical run.
Yet early ticket sales have not matched that ambition, and the critical drubbing has made it harder to sell the film as a must-see event. One breakdown of the Rotten Tomatoes trajectory noted that the “Melania Documentary” “Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Terribly Low,” undercutting the kind of word-of-mouth that can sometimes rescue a polarizing political project. The same reporting emphasized that Brett Ratner’s documentary, Melania Documentary, was facing that backlash even as its backers were still in the middle of a high-profile promotional push.
The Wild Gap Between Critics And Viewers
Here is where the story gets stranger: while critics have largely torched “Melania,” audiences have been far more forgiving, to the point that the film has reportedly set a record for the largest-ever gap between critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. One analysis of the numbers said that Melania Trump’s new documentary, Melania, had broken a site record for the biggest spread between professional reviewers and regular viewers, with the latter turning out in droves to leave positive ratings.
Another breakdown of that gap compared “Melania” to earlier examples of critic-audience divides, pointing to Transformers, which scored 57 percent with audiences despite far lower critical marks. The same piece grouped “Melania” with those outliers and noted that Other similar examples still did not match the scale of the split now attached to “Melania,” which will eventually stream on Prime Video at a later date.
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