A No Brainia For Melania (Naked City)

It’s hard to remember a movie, let alone a documentary that has been the subject of so much ridicule prior to its opening in Australia and throughout the world. Melania, the documentary, has now been released in a number of Australian cinemas — although, as of 28 January, just one single ticket had been sold across all Hoyts screenings.

Whether it was Trump sycophant Pauline Hanson who got in first remains to been seen, although Hoyts’ own webpage suggests the buyer was from Cronulla. They purchased a back-row seat for the premiere screening which could well signal an early exit.

Already the doco has generated a plethora of jokes including the suggestion that airlines will avoid it as an in-flight movie for fear of passengers walking out. There’s also a brilliant cartoon that shows ICE officers manhandling reluctant citizens into what looks like a compulsory screening at a local cinema.

For a more serious critique try Nick Hinton from the UK’s Independent who wrote, the “First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.”

How you judge this ultra-expensive documentary, for which Amazon forked out AUD $57.2m to licence, depends very much on how you perceive the role of Melania Trump. Was she just an innocent Slovenian-born model who became a naturalised US citizen and was recruited by sleaze-bucket Trump, amongst the many other women he pursued in the 80s and 90s? Or was she a kind of gold digger who manoeuvred her way into the Trump empire, and was later happy to roll with his aberrant political agenda?

Either way, she is seen in the media as very much a prop, there to hold the President’s hand and occasionally let loose with a burst of her awkwardly broken English. In his second term at the White House, there are rumours of marital discourse and a suggestion that they no longer sleep in the same bed together.

The doco looks at her role in the twenty days leading up to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Not having seen it, I can only guess that role is that of the visual, rather than a philosophical endorsement of everything the orange oligarch stands for.

There have been other First Ladies who have immersed themselves in all kinds of social issues, like Jackie Kennedy and Michelle Obama. White House spin has promoted the idea that Melania is actively involved in campaigns such as promoting children’s welfare or banning fruit flavoured electronic ciggies. Whether she has had any real political influence on a hothead like Trump, is difficult to swallow.

It’s unlikely hardcore, redneck, xenophobic MAGA supporters will rush to see Melania. Indeed, you wonder just how they perceive the current American First Lady at all, as nothing about her including her heavy Slovak accent, says ‘good old USA’.

Trump voters apparently care very little about his previous sexual misdemeanours, a civil conviction for rape and his unsavoury association with Jeffrey Epstein. Many probably just see Melania as a kind of high-class concubine, there to make the decaying Trump look good and create the illusion of marital harmony.

On a personal level, I won’t be buying a cinema ticket or downloading it, unless of course I hear there’s a scene where Melania is forced to change Trump’s overflowing diaper at 3am. Give it a few months and I am sure deviants will be able to pick up a DVD copy, bundled with a selection of Stormy Daniels X-raters at their local sex shop – in the dollar bin out front.

Whether it becomes a Rotten Tomatoes style ‘so bad it’s good’ cult classic or is even transformed into a wacky, off-Broadway musical, remains to be seen. Given what’s happening in the US at the moment, in particular with the shameful deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota at the hands of ICE, the timing of the doco’s release is questionable.

Maybe it’s seen as a kind of feel-good diversion, and already Amazon’s large investment has prompted criticism that they are using the film’s release to win favours with the Trump regime, who recently granted Jeff Bezos a massive tax break.

With a projected world-wide release in over 5,000 cinemas, the doco is already proving a massive flop in the US. In Florida for example, Trump’s adopted home state, the busiest cinema in the CBD sold not a single ticket for the opening night.

Whether Melania survives for a week or even a few days in Australian cinemas remains to be seen. What worries me is that there are still around a dozen old school drive-ins in this country. It’s surely a road safety issue if Melania does happen to screen at one of them. Once drive-in patrons fully realise that it’s a diabolical dud, there could be a mad scramble for the exit gate resulting in an horrendous pile-up of vehicles.

Just another reason to give it a great big miss!