Jimmy Kimmel spent a lot of time ragging on Melania Trump in January amid the theatrical release for her panned documentary “Melania,” but now he’s actually seen the Brett Ratner-directed movie. “Melania” began streaming March 9 on Amazon Prime Video. Kimmel informed his late-night viewers during his March 10 monologue that he finally watched the doc, quipping: “Between this and ‘Sinners,’ it’s been a big year for vampire movies.”
“While some might say that it is not a great look to be plugging your vanity project while your husband’s bombing another country, Melania has never cared much about optics,” Kimmel continued. “She can’t even pronounce optics. More than anything, this documentary is dreadfully dull. The whole thing is Melania going to fittings, riding in a car, trying on clothes, and interviewing people to work for her.”
Kimmel showed a clip from “Melania” in which Donald Trump calls his wife to inform her that he’s secured a second term as president after the 2024 election. Melania congratulates Donald but informs him that she did not watch the election results in real time.
“You really should try and watch it,” Donald tells his wife, who responds: “I will see it. Yeah, I will see it on the news.”
Kimmel reacted to the footage by saying: “[This is] one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever heard. It almost makes me feel a little bad for him. She does not care at all.”
The ABC late-night host was critical of “Melania” since before the documentary opened, when he ripped the movie as a “$75 million bribe” that “Amazon made for her.” The host then roasted the movie’s $7 million box office debut by saying “it set a record. It was the biggest opening for a non-musical vanity project/brazen corporate bribe in the last 10 years.”
Kimmel later turned his attention towards “Melania” reviews, which were largely been negative compared to through-the-roof audience scores.
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“As of tonight, ‘Melania’ has a score of 5% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics. That is very low,” Kimmel said. “To put that in perspective, that is 1% lower than ‘Gigli.’ The audience score for ‘Melania’ is 99% positive, which is 1% higher than ‘The Godfather.’ And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with that at all.”
The movie’s audience scores led to theories that MAGA-supported bots were driving up the score, which prompted Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company Versant to release a statement denying such claims.
“There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the ‘Melania’ documentary,” Versant said in a statement to Variety. “Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.”
Watch Kimmel’s full monologue in the video below.
From Variety US