Melania: the reviews are in

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🍸 Melania launches in cinemas worldwide this weekend, having already raised eyebrows over the sums involved.

Amazon forked out $40 million for the rights - the most it’s ever paid for a piece of content, and three times more than the next bidder. First Lady Melania Trump personally pocketed $28 million from that sum during the Trumps’ post-election “cash bonanza”. And then there’s the $35 million more Amazon is paying to market and distribute this film, in an attempt to get this turkey to fly.

And turkey it is: its foulness unites critics from across the media’s political spectrum.

You might not be surprised to hear it gets mocked in the Guardian: “No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun,” writes Xan Brookes, “but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality.”

There’s Judith Woods over in the Telegraph (🎁 gift link) unloading some prose at it too: “It’s two hours of North Korea-style propaganda with a dash of Ralph Lauren,” she writes.

Others join in. “The ‘film’ is part propaganda, sure, and part sop to Big Tech companies who require constant regulatory approval for financial manoeuvrings,” says Nick Hilton. “Even then, it is bad. It will exist as a striking artefact – like The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will – of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly.”

At Empire, William Thomas brands it “political propaganda at its most transparent - cynical, pointless, and very, very boring.” The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon says “my soul left my body during the very first seconds of the film, when a drone shot over the ocean makes its way over the Mar-a-Lago grounds to Melania’s feet in heels, walking to her car as The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’’ plays.”

If you want more of that sort of thing, New York has the best review of the reviews.

In the meantime, a skewering of the film from The Daily Show is probably more entertaining - and certainly shorter and cheaper - than the film itself. (🎥 YouTube)

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PLUS: find top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend, including the perfect film to get you in the mood for the Winter Olympics, which open next week.

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