The Melania film? As insightful as ‘train go choo-choo’

I was so bored by Melania, the documentary about America’s first lady, that I am finding it hard to put into words just how dull it was. I was so bored by Melania that when, around three-quarters of the way through, she used the voiceover to talk about her identity as an immigrant and add that “no matter where we come from, we’re bound by the same humanity”, I just didn’t have it in me to get angry at the rank hypocrisy.

I was so bored by Melania that I looked at the many, many uncomfortably close shots of her Louboutins and I thought, with great sorrow, that it was very unfortunate I didn’t have a foot fetish. That would have kept me busy.

It was all a terrible shame, as the afternoon had had a promising start. As I walked into the cinema, I found myself unable to say the title of the movie, out of social embarrassment, so I gave the screen number instead, and was informed that we’d been moved to a bigger room. I was gobsmacked, and couldn’t wait to come face to face with those mystery moviegoers.

As it turned out, they were other journalists, nearly all of them. One reporter had been dispatched specifically to speak to attendees, and left nearly empty-handed. She was the lucky one. The rest of us had to stay after the movie began.

“Every day I live with purpose and devotion,” Melania said in the first few minutes of the documentary. A low giggle travelled across the aisles. She had the last laugh, though: within half an hour or so, she’d managed to pedal through so many hypnotically uninteresting scenes, conversations and quotes that none of it felt especially funny any more.

A personal highlight was the discussion about putting the Trumps’ furniture back in the White House. Barron’s bed would have to be bigger, she explained to staff, as he was a child when he moved in the first time and now he’s an adult man. Elsewhere, she’s asked by someone off-camera who her favourite singer is and she says it’s Michael Jackson. We then watch her mouth along to Billie Jean for around a month.

Technically, we’re meant to learn about the 20 days before the inauguration in 2025, and presumably about the first lady in the process. In practice we learn… Melania Trump is entirely, remarkably free of quirk and charisma. It is – ironically – nearly compelling, but never quite gets there.

In several scenes that ought to feel poignant, she discussed her mother, and the fact that she died last year. Somehow, we’re left with neither a sense of what Melania actually wanted to tell us, or an idea of what this apparently great woman was like. “Grief comes in waves,” she said at some point, which is as technically correct and as insightful as “train go choo-choo”.

If you need me, I’ll be over there in my “I watched the Melania documentary and all I got was this new crippling fear of one day getting stuck in a lift with her” T-shirt.

Photograph by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images