I sat in a near-empty cinema for Melania – here’s what I thought

Here’s my take as someone who actually sat through the 1:10 pm showing of Melania this Saturday afternoon at Frederick Warehouse Cinemas in Maryland — in what might fairly be described as a near-empty auditorium — after reading about similar experiences worldwide.

Melania: A Film That Misses Its Moment

I walked into an otherwise quiet screening room with — let’s be honest — mild curiosity and low expectations. What I didn’t expect was the eerie sense that even the movie itself was waiting for something to happen. Instead, it just… didn’t.

Shot and presented as a documentary, Melania ostensibly offers a fly-on-the-wall look at the 20 days leading up to the January 2025 inauguration of former First Lady Melania Trump. But what plays out on screen feels less like revelation and more like a curated highlight reel of mundanity dressed in couture.

Superficiality by Design

From the outset, the film elects to linger on visuals of sleek outfits, immaculate tables, and the controlled choreography of events — all delivered at a glacial pace. There’s a lot of look at this, admire that, but precious little sense of depth or human insight. Moments that should feel revealing — say, about her personal motivations or inner life — are often reduced to surface explanations or stylized setups.

This lack of emotional core makes what I watched feel, frankly, like watching a fashion campaign with extra padding. It’s slick, sure — but it doesn’t earn its runtime. Critics have called it vacant and airless, suggesting it lacks dramatic urgency or meaningful context, and my experience only reinforced that.

An Empty Room, and Not Just Here

My screening had more staff than audience — a theme echoed everywhere this documentary has opened. Across the U.S. and in the U.K., box office data and anecdotal reports showed sparse crowds, with some theaters only selling a handful of tickets or none at all.

That empty room becomes part of Melania’s unintentional legacy: the film’s own rollout feels as hollow as its content. A reportedly huge combined production and marketing spend — estimated near $75 million — should make for something gripping at the least. Instead, audiences appear unmoved.

The Human Element That Never Arrives

What’s most striking — and most disappointing — is how little we learn about the person behind the polished visuals. Melania, by design or default, stays guarded and curiously distant. Even intimate moments are choreographed: yes, there’s a solemn visit to a church, and scenes where she discusses business and family, but they lack insight beyond the obvious.

The filmmakers had access, and yet fail to leverage it into something that feels revealing or even instructive. If the goal was to humanize, the result is underbaked.

Not Just a Documentary — but also Not Quite Cinema

It’s tempting to call Melania something other than a true documentary — a gesture, a showcase, or perhaps a long, highly produced podcast with visuals. And while the intention to push back against her historically private persona is clear, the execution ends up feeling like a meticulously arranged scrapbook — beautiful on the surface, inert underneath.

By the time the credits rolled, I was left thinking: this is a film that passed by without saying anything that resonates outside the theater’s walls — or filling even half the seats. That in itself might be the most telling story Melania has to offer about where we are as a culture.

Final verdict: Melania is a technically competent and polished portrait that ultimately fails to justify its existence as cinema. Surface sheen alone doesn’t make a compelling documentary, and this film is a reminder of that truth — particularly in a room where most seats sat unbothered.

(And yes — that theater silence wasn’t just a product of this screening time; it’s a pattern echoed globally.)