Some movies get a bad review; others, like Melania, get a historical downgrade. The Guardian has corrected its already grim one-star rating of the $75 million documentary on Melania Trump to something even harsher: zero stars. Per the Daily Beast, the paper said in a note posted on Monday that the initial one-star score was a "formatting issue," and that critic Xan Brooks had actually meant to award the film no stars at all. That puts Melania in rare company—just the 19th production in the Guardian's two-century history to earn a zero, the most recent being Kim Kardashian's legal drama All's Fair.
The documentary, which premiered Friday at Washington's Kennedy Center, follows the then-future first lady over the 20 days before Donald Trump's second inauguration. Brooks argues that the film barely qualifies as a documentary, likening it instead to "designer taxidermy"—high-end, glossy, and emotionally empty. He goes on to call it "dispiriting," "deadly," and "spectacularly unrevealing," comparing it to a "gilded trash remake" of The Zone of Interest Holocaust movie, with Melania as a "button-eyed Cinderella" distracting viewers with luxury as Trump and allies allegedly scheme in the background.
The Guardian is far from alone in its assessment. Writing for the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon labels the Brett Ratner-directed film an "abomination" and "insipid propaganda," arguing it's so predictable it almost defies critique. Forbes, meanwhile, notes that Melania now ranks as one of IMDb's five worst-reviewed movies of all time, tying Foodfight! and Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas with 1.3 stars out of 10.
Audiences don't appear to be rushing to its defense: The movie is estimated to have pulled in about $7 million in its opening weekend, nowhere close to its reported $75 million budget. But a New York Times reviewer says everyone is "missing the point" about the film.
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