“Melania,” fresh off its calamitous run in theaters, is streaming today.
Brett Ratner’s hilariously awful infomercial has arrived on Amazon Prime — and it’s free.
All you have to do is watch an ad from Fox Nation, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and “Melania” is yours without commercial interruption.
Are we surprised? Of course, Rupert Murdoch is sponsoring “Melania.” Who else was going to kick on a few million to the Trump grift?
“Melania” is full of needle drop music, none of it approved by the performers. All the songs were licensed, and listed at the end of the credits.
But one credit is glaringly absent. Even though “Melania” begins with the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” there is no indication of it in the credits. All the other songs are there, but the credit roll ends with a blank spot where “Gimme Shelter” may have been listed in the theatrical release.
Stones fans were incensed that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards might have approved use of their song in the film. The songwriting pair has complained about Donald Trump using their song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” at his rallies. I told you that Jagger and Richards don’t own the publishing, which was part of their old deal with Beatles nemesis Allen Klein and ABKCO Records.
It may be the song was de-listed from the streaming version at the company’s request.
What is “Melania” like? You can see for yourselves, for free thanks to Rupert Murdoch. It’s most definitely propaganda, an infomercial, and political ad. It’s not a documentary, and shouldn’t be thought of as one.
No one is interviewed. “Melania” is really just stitched together clips of Donald Trump’s third wife speaking in a heavy accent (she turns the word “warm” into two syllables — “war-um”) to her designers and decorators, and pulling up in a lot of cars. None of Donald’s family appears. Barron stumbles through to the Inauguration speech, waving, looking morose behind vacant eyes.
What’s missing: anything remotely personal, any sense of humanity, or humor, disarming moments caught by the director. It’s paint by numbers.
Here’s the title card when you go to Amazon:
