Graeme Sloan/AP

Even in the Trumpian corner of New Jersey, where I chose to witness Melania, the $75 million Amazon-produced film about the first lady, I predicted that I would be watching alone. This is, after all, a historically bad time for theatrical releases, and initial forecasts for Melania‘s opening weekend had been dismal. Yet there they were, at least a dozen attendees at a 10 a.m. screening on a frigid Saturday morning. I appeared to be the only one who required breakfast wine for what was about to unfold.

What flashed across the screen over the next hour and 48 minutes can best be described as an interminable slog of airbrushed nothingness. After all, only so much entertainment can be wrung out of footage of a woman in snakeskin Louboutins traveling from Mar-a-Lago to New York and back again in the lead-up to the inauguration. And yet, for nearly two hours, the film turns on the premise that its subject is some kind of fashion genius, resulting in some of the most stultifying scenes I have ever seen committed to film. What other way........

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