While ‘Melania’, a documentary film about President Donald Trump‘s wife Melania Trump, received harsh reviews from critics after its release, it received high ratings from audiences, showing the phenomenon of political polarization.
The documentary film ‘Melania’, which deals with President Donald Trump’s wife Melania Trump, is causing an unprecedented phenomenon not only in Hollywood but also in American society right after its release. The historic harsh criticism of the critics and the blind praise of the supporters clashed, making it a battleground for political factions.
Director Brett Ratner’s film ‘Melania’, released on January 30, captures the 20-day journey of preparing for Trump’s second presidential inauguration. After ‘Melania’ was released, overseas media poured out harsh reviews.
The Guardian, a British daily newspaper, criticized the film as “a soulless remake of ‘The Zone of Interest’ and gilded trash.” He pointed out that the movie was only focused on Melania’s extravagant costumes and the decorations of the White House, and that the character’s inner life and political context were completely neutered. The British Telegraph also criticized it, saying, “It’s like a two-hour North Korean-style propaganda piece.”
Current affairs magazine Time criticized the film’s poor narrative, saying, “It is not a documentary, but a reputation management and branding campaign lasting 1 hour and 44 minutes.” The Independent criticized the film’s poor narrative, calling it “pure emptiness.”
The exact opposite is happening on audience rating sites. As of February 9, the critic index (freshness) on Rotten Tomatoes, a leading American movie criticism site, is recording 10%. At one point, it went down to 6%.
On the other hand, the actual audience index (popcorn index) recorded 99%, close to a perfect score. Viewers commented, “It’s a great video,” “It’s elegant and stylish,” and “It’s not that political.” This remains one of the largest examples of the gap between critics and audiences in the site’s history.
As the Rotten Tomatoes index was so high, some raised suspicions that the ratings were driven by Trump supporters or manipulated using bots. American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel sarcastically said, “The audience score for ‘Melania’ is 1% higher than ‘The Godfather’. I’m sure Trump was not involved in this at all.”
Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company Versant officially explained, “Audience ratings are comprised of reviews from users who have confirmed ticket purchases, and there is no evidence of manipulation,” but the controversy has not subsided.
On the other hand, IMDb, another movie database site, recorded the lowest score of 1.3 out of 10, showing extreme temperature differences between platforms.
There are differing interpretations regarding profits. ‘Melania’, which was released in 1,778 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, recorded revenue of approximately 10 billion won in its first week. This is known to be the best opening performance among non-fiction films other than music documentaries in 10 years. According to post-track research results, in the first week of release, 83% of the audience was over 45 years old, 75% were white, and 72% were female, which led to the box office success.
However, in the second week, although the number of theaters in North America increased by 300, ticket sales revenue was only about 3.5 billion won. In particular, considering that distributor Amazon MGM invested more than 100 billion won in purchasing rights and marketing, the prevailing analysis is that it is virtually difficult to exceed the break-even point in theaters. Regarding this, a former Amazon executive criticized, “There is no explanation other than an attempt to win the favor of the Trump administration or an outright bribe.”
Meanwhile, interest in ‘Melania’ also led to a reversal of the Netflix documentary ‘Becoming’, which deals with former President Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama. From the 30th of last month, the first week of the theatrical release of ‘Melania’, to the 1st of this month, the total viewing time of ‘Becoming’ on Netflix was 47.5 million minutes and 480,000 streaming views. It increased by 13,300% compared to the previous weekend.
Attention is being paid to whether Melania, whose likes and dislikes are sharply divided depending on political interests, will be able to break even. Also, attention is focused on whether it will fuel the social conflict that is currently escalating in the United States and its social aftermath.
date: 2026-02-10 01:15:00