Sure, Melania the movie is propaganda, but have you seen the BBC recently? |
This is the bit where I’m supposed to say I watched Melania so that you all don’t have to. I’ve seen worse, though. The documentary film chronicling the American First Lady’s life in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s inauguration last year is that curiously rare thing: notorious even before anyone had seen it. Reviews of this movie have been universally bleak and ticket sales in the UK sparse.
You began looking furtively over your shoulder to check if you’d been spotted heading into Cineworld’s theatre 5 at Silverburn, like the jumpy men in the brown raincoats who used to hang around outside the old Classic Grand on Sauchiehall Street before the matinee blue-movie double bill.
How bad could it be, though? It surely couldn’t be more tortuous than Everything Everywhere all at Once in 2022, a piece of cinematic chaos that seemed to be about people who’d overdosed on the electric smarties in a Chinese laundry.
The young cinema attendant pops over to ask if I may perhaps have wandered into the wrong movie, bless her. I’m all on my own in a bijou, 21-seater. She tells me that the previous day in Cineworld’s Edinburgh complex there had been drama. A member of staff had actually walked off the job in protest at his employers’ decision to screen such a dangerous flick. A group who’d arrived to watch another movie turned back when they saw the poster for Melania. This must be serious: in Edinburgh the staff only walk out when Joanna Cherry makes an appearance.........