Jimmy Kimmel spent a lot of time slamming Melania Trump during the theatrical release of her pan-documentary Melania Trump in January, and now he’s actually watching the Brett Ratner-directed movie. “Melania” will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video from March 9th. In his March 10 monologue, Kimmel announced to late-night viewers that he had finally seen the doc and quipped, “Between this and ‘Sinners,’ this was a big year for vampire movies.”
“Some might say it’s not a good look to work on your own vanity projects while your husband is bombing other countries, but Melania has never cared much about optics,” Kimmel continued. “She can’t even pronounce optics. Best of all, this documentary is horribly boring. It’s all just Melania going to fittings, riding in cars, trying on clothes, and interviewing the people who work for her.”
Kimmel showed a clip of “Melania” in which Donald Trump calls his wife to tell her that he has secured a second term as president after the 2024 election. Melania congratulated Donald, but informed him that she was not watching the election results in real time.
Donald said to his wife, “You should check it out,” and she replied, “Yes, I’ll watch it on the news.”
Kimmel responded to the video, saying, “[This is]one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever heard. I almost feel bad for him. She doesn’t care at all.”
The ABC late-night host was critical of “Melania” even before the documentary began, at which time he slammed the film as “a $75 million bribe that Amazon made for her.” The host then praised the film’s debut, which grossed $7 million at the box office, saying, “It set a record. It was the biggest opening for a non-musical ostentation project/brazen corporate bribery in the last 10 years.”
Kimmel then drew attention to the reviews for “Melania,” which were mostly negative when compared to general audience scores.
“As of tonight, ‘Melania’ has a 5% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is very low,” Kimmel said. “To put that in perspective, this is 1% lower than ‘Gigli.'” The audience score for “Melania” is 99% positive, 1% higher than “The Godfather.” And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with it. ”
The film’s audience scores led to theories that MAGA-backed bots were pushing up the scores, with Rotten Tomatoes parent company Versant releasing a statement denying such claims.
“There was no bot manipulation in the viewer reviews of the ‘Melania’ documentary,” Barsant said in a statement to Variety. “Reviews that appear on Popcorn Meter are verified reviews, meaning we have verified that you purchased a movie ticket.”
Watch Kimmel’s full monologue in the video below.
