As we have covered previously here, this weekend saw the debut of the new documentary, Melania, an inside look at the activities surrounding First Lady Melania Trump as she returns to the White House. There has been plenty of excitable coverage from both sides of the pro/con divide regarding this administration.
Some sober analysis is required here, which makes it more ironic that I will be the one doing so! We knew that the entertainment press would come hard for this film. The critics and journos covering the industry have shown for years to have an inherent hostility towards any cultural offering that may trend on the wrong side of the socio-political tracks, and a film centered on the First Lady was assured to be treated harshly by the Hollywood hecklers. One went beyond the gathered gripefest.
The Sheer Viciousness of So Many ‘Melania’ Reviews Proves Yet Again How Much the Elitist Media Hates You
Keith Uhlich plies his trade on Substack, which itself means very little. Film reviewers are a dime a dozen, and on that platform, you might be overpaying. But Uhlich is a verified reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator, and this only serves to illustrate the discount value that platform has dropped to in recent years.
Our friend, conservative movie writer Christian Toto, highlighted Keith’s review, littered among the many panned critiques, for a very significant reason. Uhlich was predictably dismissive and venomous in his review of “Melania”, but he approached things in a unique fashion: He chose not to go near the documentary. That is to say, he boldly refused to see the film he was reviewing.
Full disclosure: I will never watch “Melania”. And my sole comment on it is that pondering fellow NYU alum and perennial no-talent Brett Ratner’s reinvention as idjit Leni Riefenstahl gets me all a-titter, with heartier guffaws if I imagine him on-set looking like semi-doppelgänger Jonah Hill in the “Married Your Cousin” scene from “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
This is the level of “talent” that Rotten Tomatoes relies upon for its metered review process. (Now, to the site’s credit, Christian Toto issued an update to inform readers that the site has since removed Uhlich’s review from counting against the score.) While serving as one example, this is how unreliable the movie site has become; the critics were uniformly savage, and the audience score was a polar opposite, nearing perfection. As of this writing, the average from the critics sees them giving the film a woeful eight percent score, while the audience figure is at 98 percent.
The audience reviews are always suspect, as “review bombing” is a feature frequently seen. This is when fans log their impressions of a movie, regardless of whether they see it or not. The site has had to contend with this phenomenon several times, taking action to suspend the feature on the site, and now verifying ticket purchases for those desiring to leave an opinion. But this is an instance of a verified critic engaging in that same anti-social behavior.
That is the unspoken reality in Hollywood; the film critics, while posturing like cineastes with elevated aesthetics on films, can behave just as repugnant as the online trolls. So when Melania was poised for release, the only question was how low would they torpedo the ratings? One such example of the stunted criticism is seen from Manohla Dargis, of The New York Times, who trashed the film not for its overt MAGA sensibilities, but because it presented “an outwardly apolitical portrait of Melania Trump.”
You get the sense that Ms. Dargis had the score cued up before viewing, and then had to recalibrate the “why” when delivering her critique.
Prepare for the Leftist Tantrums: the New ‘Melania’ Documentary Is Hitting Amazing Numbers
‘Melania’ Review: Priceless Moments in Gripping Behind the Scenes Look at a Return to the White House
So we have completely partisan and biased effects going into things with this documentary. Is it possible to get a decent read on how it was performing, both at the ticket booth and with audiences? For the weekend, the film drew in around $7 million. As major releases go, this is rather paltry, but mitigating metrics are in play. This being a documentary means it had limited reach, and the film played in just over 1,700 screens. Major releases are usually given twice that amount, with upwards of 4,500 or more, for major studio releases.
Instead of online opinions, a better read comes from the companies conducting exit polling in theaters. The movie received a strong “A” grade from CinemaScore, it earned five stars on PostTrak, and received a rare 89 percent Definite Recommend from another measurement service. That said, the ticket sales also performed better than expected. The film had been projected to draw about $4.5-5 million, and this weekend’s return stands as the best opening for a documentary in over a decade. (Concert films are regarded in another classification.) This level of success has carried slanted impressions as well.
The desperate need to call it a “failure” looks at that low rake, and others are noting it was rather costly for a documentary (an estimated $40 million), and a heavy marketing push may boost the studio investment closer to $70 million. But this was an Amazon-MGM production, so it becoming a streaming player means some of the talk of losses is negated.
Also, there are those suggesting the level reached for the film was the result of bulk ticket buying from political groups and other artificial boosting methods, but these claims do not hold up. The better-performing markets were outside New York, Los Angeles, and – considering the subject matter – Washington D.C. Another way the PAC buying claim is dispelled is when Deadline reported that over 50 percent of the tickets were bought the day of the viewing, a significantly higher percentage than normal, and showing that presales were not the driving force.
Now consider how much of the country had been slammed with fierce winter weather. That certainly had to depress the turnout.
So yes, while Melania did in fact have an impressive weekend, it is certainly a matter of where one sits politically in determining how impressed you may become. Imagine that: a film based on a political figure is being affected by the personal politics of the audience…and the “professional” entertainment journalists.
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