‘Melania’ Amazon Documentary Pulled from Theater

Melania Trump‘s critically derided documentary, released by Amazon MGM Studios, continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Directed by Brett Ratner (Red Dragon), Melania chronicles the three weeks leading up to her husband Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in January 2025 — his second term in the White House either side of Joe Biden’s reign. Less than a week into its theatrical run, though, Amazon has spoiled the party over at Portland establishment The Lake Theater & Café, whose manager Jordan Perry orchestrated a satirical marquee targeting the project.

“Does Melania wear Prada? Find out Friday!” and “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday,” read two of the fun-poking messages adorning the front of the building. Inevitably, staff at Amazon got wind of the set-up and this led to a stern phone call from the conglomerate, canceling the movie’s presence there. On Instagram, Lake Theater & Café announced:

“Got a call that the higher ups (i.e., at Amazon) were upset with how our marquee marketed their movie (i.e., Melania), that, per them, Sunday would be its last day here. Also got, before then, countless emails and voicemails and Google / Yelp reviews (Google / Yelp took them down) wondering why the hell we had Melania here, or disdaining our disparaging of her. Now that it’s prematurely over, the plug pulled on us not from public outcry (always listening, thank you) but by some corporate executive (fair enough, sorry AMZN, please don’t cancel my Prime).”

Perry explained his decision to bring Melania to the business via its official website, citing a desert-like marketplace and the poor financial returns of Send Help, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, The Secret Agent, and The Testament of Ann Lee as contributing factors. And yet, his biggest driving force seemed to be that it would just provide a good laugh.

“To fill a screen, why not get this inexplicable vanity piece from the current president’s wife? I mean, it just seems so weird that it even exists, and wouldn’t it then be exponentially weirder, to the point of being funny, to show it here, at your obviously anti-establishment, occasionally troublemaking, neighborhood cinema?”

‘Melania’ is a Rotten Tomato Indeed

Despite an astonishing 99% ranking on the Popcornmeter (take from that what you will), Melania is fast becoming one of the worst-received features ever made. At the time of writing, this vanity piece sits on a 5% score on the Tomatometer, based on 39 reviews, with critics labeling it a “gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest” and a stitch-together “of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show.”

Rotten Tomatoes ratings are up-and-down affairs, especially during the original periods of release, but even Melania‘s highest number was pretty tragic (11%). This hasn’t stopped the First Lady herself from living up to the family name by celebrating its hollow successes on social media, though. To Mrs. Trump, the fact that Melania made the most money of any theatrically-released doc in its opening weekend — in the last decade, that is — was enough. At least in a public way, she’s managed to shut out all negative noise, unlike her other half.