My wife and I went to see the “Melania” documentary. We attended a Sunday afternoon showing in one of Illinois’ big blue cities. The theater held about 250 people and about 50 mostly older white people were in attendance. The unusually long cold snap may have kept people away on the opening weekend.
I found the movie captivating and thought provoking. I came away with a few observations about Melania Trump after watching the movie:
- She is a very classy woman and still appears as the high fashion model she once was.
- She is at home in uncomfortable looking 6-inch high heels.
- Her fashion is very modest with most dresses covering her legs to mid-calf.
- She has a circle of professional friendships in the fashion industry.
- She is expert in fashion design and event planning in her own right.
- Her colors of choice seem to be black with white.
- Her favorite song is Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”.
- She loves and worries after her husband and family sincerely.
- She loved her late mother and loves her living father.
- She is serious and looks to husband Donald and son Barron for laughs.
- Her causes such as “Be Best” and “Fostering the Future” are her job as First Lady.
- Her Secret Service security detail is very impressive.
The movie covers about a year, the planning period for Trump’s second Inauguration. Melania Trump was largely the designer/event planner for Donald Trump’s second Inauguration into the Presidency of the United States. The film shares the behind the scenes planning required to put on all of the many events, a schedule that would exhaust most Americans no matter what age. When the inauguration events were finally finished, it was 2:00am as Melania headed to bed, she mentions she’s been going for 22 hours straight. The day concluded with 3 Presidential Balls.
The ceremony lasted for 4 days, and much of the cost was footed by the Trump’s Campaign. They raised a record $170 million, and at least 250,000 guests in were attendance, according to the U.S. Secret Service.
Jeff Bezos and his Amazon MGM Studios supposedly dropped $40 million into the production of the Melania documentary and another $35 million in promoting it. Some called the movie a corporate payout to Trump. It was obvious when Jeff Bezos and other prominent wealthy Americans walked away from Kamala Harris and the Democrats during the last election.
While many respect the business moves of Bezos, was spending $40 million for the production of this documentary really necessary? $35 million was spent on pre-release promotion, but in our part of northern Illinois we saw no real promotion on Network television. We did see movie trailers on YouTube and on the Amazon Prime streaming service.
Besides the lack of publicity for the documentary, we did notice many YouTube content providers predicting it’s failure before its released. It was almost like “unpromoting” the documentary.
CONCLUSION:
This is the first and only movie I’ve watched where the audience gave it a round of applause when it concluded. This is the only movie I watched where it appeared that organized conspirators were working to taint the reviews before the documentary opened. “Melania” was critiqued by critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and received an 11% approval rating, but it scored a 99% with the site’s “verified audience.”
While the bean counters state the movie took in a respectable $7-8 million in its opening weekend, they are quick to point out it was a failure because the cost of production and promotion was $75 million. Whether this will be proven true is debatable.
To end on a better note, I found a few things in this film heartwarming and some humorous:
- At one point the President calls the First Lady to ask if she had seen TV coverage about him that day and she had. He goes on like a school boy telling his mom about his day and the scene is really precious.
- Another scene showed President Trump preparing for his inaugural speech and he announces himself as a “peacemaker” and Melania injects “and unifier”. During the actual speech includes her line and turns to Melania to see if it made her happy.”
- At one point the Melania camera crew panned the new front license plate on The Beast (Presidential limo) that read “45 47” and the audience loved it.
- When President Trump found out he and Melania were going to be riding with Joe and Jill Biden from the White House to the Capitol he is heard to quip, “That should be interesting.” Again, the audience loved it!
- The scenes the audience loved the most included appearances by Barron Trump both at the Capitol inauguration ceremony, as well as at President Trump’s indoor speech at the Capital One Arena in place of the traditional parade, due to extreme cold weather. President Trump mentions his son now stands 6’-9”!
- Not included in the movie was Barron Trump’s confrontation of Joe Biden, causing a facial change from all smiles to concern. According to lip readers Barron allegedly said, “It’s on.”
Lip readers have clearly confirmed Melania scolded Barron saying, “Try to be nice,” and this can be clearly seen once again in this movie.
“What Barron Trump really said to Biden” – Sky News Australia
I will conclude this with another old adage I love. “Behind every great man, is a great woman,” said by former First Lady Elinor Roosevelt, who served during her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms as president from 1933 to 1945.
Everything about Melania Trump is glamours and and President Trump said, “We need some glamour in the country.”
Once “Melania” concludes its theatrical run it will head to Amazon Prime and other streaming outlets. Melania’s weekend’s opening beat expectations, achieving the highest opening for a non-music documentary in over a decade.
© 2026 by Mark S. Schwendau
