The documentary film <Melania>, starring Melania, the wife of U.S. President Donald Trump, landed at the center of controversy upon release. Its unusual box-office success, scathing critical reviews, and overwhelming praise from the supporter base converged, turning it into a provocative work that exposes the extreme polarization of American society.

Released on the 30th of last month, <Melania> is a documentary that follows 20 days in the life of the ‘First Lady’ Melania last January, ahead of the second Trump inauguration. It includes her preparations for the inauguration and for reentering the White House, along with private moments and previously unreleased footage.

In its opening weekend, the film earned about $7 million (about 10 billion won) at the North American box office, beating expectations. Excluding concert films, it marked the strongest documentary opening in 14 years. The audience profile was clear: white middle-aged and older women in Republican-leaning regions such as Florida and Texas dominated. Women aged 55 and older accounted for 72% of advance sales, and by race, the white share reached 75%.

In contrast with the box-office figures, critical reception was chilly. The British daily the Guardian delivered a pan, saying “hard to find even a single redeeming quality,” and argued that the film focuses only on the glamorous exterior of Melania while avoiding political context or the subject’s inner life. One critic likened the work to “a low-grade remake of a lavishly packaged <The Zone of Interest>,” and added: “While Cinderella points to gilded jewelry and designer dresses to deftly distract the audience, her husband and his associates are preparing to dismantle the Constitution and plunder the assets of the federal government.”

The Telegraph likewise labeled it “a two-hour North Korean-style propaganda piece served with Ralph Lauren,” adding that it is “closer to a promotional reel for an ambitious American First Lady than to a documentary.”

This critical response was reflected in the numbers. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score (Tomatometer) fell at one point to 5%, and the Metacritic score hovered around 5 (out of 100). In effect, nearly every critic delivered a negative verdict.

By contrast, the verified audience score (Popcorn score) on Rotten Tomatoes reached 98%, near perfect, revealing a stark temperature gap. On a single platform, an anomaly emerged in which the gap between critic and general-audience ratings widened to nearly 80 to 90 points. The U.S. magazine Rolling Stone reported that it was “the film with the largest criticaudience score gap in Rotten Tomatoes history.”

The overwhelmingly high audience score sparked online suspicions that Trump supporters had mobilized bots to manipulate ratings. U.S. talk show host Jimmy Kimmel quipped, “The ‘Melania’ audience score is 1 percentage point higher than ‘The Godfather.’ I am certain Trump had absolutely nothing to do with this.” As the controversy spread, Rotten Tomatoes’ parent company Versant explained that it was “user data with verified ticket purchases.”

The film also drew allegations of a “political bribe.” The distributor ‘Amazon MGM’ poured an astronomical sum of about $75 million (about 108.6 billion won) into rights acquisition and marketing, and reports that about $28 million (about 40.5 billion won) of the rights fee was paid to the Melania camp that led production sparked speculation that this was an investment made with an eye to relations with the Trump administration.

Despite the massive outlay, by the second week the box-office momentum had dropped sharply, making it difficult to break even. A former executive in Amazon’s film division suggested there may have been First Lady favoritism, saying, “There is no way to explain it other than an attempt to curry favor with the Trump administration or an outright bribe (Outright bribe).”

The controversies around ‘Melania’ did not end there. The film is directed by Brett Ratner, who had been ousted from Hollywood over sexual misconduct allegations, and it also faces claims of unauthorized music use. On the 12th (local time), the entertainment trade Variety reported that director Paul Thomas Anderson of <Phantom Thread> (2017) and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood asked the Melania side to remove that film’s music from <Melania> after it was allegedly used without permission.

Interweaving box office and ratings, political interests, and ethical disputes, <Melania> has become a documentary in another sense. The film is set to remain as a work that shows how the polarization of American society has penetrated deeply beyond politics into the cultural sphere.