Melania Trump's new film has arrived in cinemas, but there is a sad truth behind the move that the world needs to know.
No one ever said that 'being best' is easy.
Even before the feature-length doco, Melania premiered last weekend, it was all over social media. Cinemagoers were enthusiastically sharing screenshots of empty or near empty cinemas ahead of its theatrical release.
If you'd been waiting with bated breath to watch the First Lady, based on the trailer, do such fascinating things as breathe, wear a hat, and tell Donald she didn't watch some big bit of his re-election, then you could have just walked, no need to run.
It performed better at the box office in the US than projected, taking in more than $10 million in the US, but is still unlikely to be anything but a red line item in the Amazon budget, which spent a reported $105 million making the film. Australian audiences didn't help things with Melania earning all of $982 per screen and coming in 31st.
But Melania was never about making money - what it really is is the latest, hottest, celebrity must-have.
See, once you've reached a stage where your jets are automatically private; knickers, only ever virgin mulberry silk; and organic oat milk, hand squeezed daily by staff in the pre-dawn hours, then there is one thing, darrhhhling, the rich and famous just have to have, their very own vanity project doco.
Bandwagon? Jump right on.
Melania Trump now joins King Charles, Sir David and Lady Victoria Beckham, Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lizzo, Paris Hilton, Michael Jordan and Michelle Obama, to name just some of the celebs who have made big budget TV and movie projects about the most fascinating subject of all - themselves.
This is not cinéma vérité but cinéma shameless publicité.
The format of documentary used to mean something else - a person bravely agreeing to give a camera crew access to their private life and self, to allow a nonpartisan filmmaker, ideally wearing a backwards Kangol cap, to peel back the layers, to strip away the glossy veneers of PR.
The assumption used to be that a documentary automatically meant a certain committed, dispassionate observational lens applied to a subject, to produce an unflinching and fearless look at something.
It was about chronicling and capturing an unseen side of someone, not a hagiography with good lighting and a staring role for a hat.
But recent years have seen a spate of these doco dupes, the Chanel with two 'Ls' of the doco genre, which have none of the implied objectivity that the genre used to connote. Instead the celebrities' sticky fingerprints are all over them.
Now, in the vertical video age, forget the fawning mag cover stories of the aughties with attendant lushly-lit Annie Leibovitz shoot; forget the heartfelt, tears-staining-the-page tell-all memoir; forget even Oprah's much jumped on sofa. For big names wanting to reframe their narrative or push some particular angle or make the world fall back in love with them, there is only one thing to do. You boy, bring me a tame documentary and be quick about it.
Let's be honest - this crop of A list docos are the puff pieces for the social media age, meme-able, portable, clippable vehicles for pushing a very particular line about a celebrity - look ma, no hands!
The DIY doco game is a canny one. It offers celebrities the chance to tell a very particular story all packaged up in the cloak of supposed impartiality. Really though, they are slick propaganda efforts that would make the Stasi's Department of Information look on longingly.
A spade, even a $105 million one paid for Jeff Bezos, is still a spade. There is no bravery in making a doco about yourself; only upside. When you control what makes it to the screen or have a high degree of editorial control, the hard or even just minorly uncomfortable truth is hardly going to get any airtime.
The two biggest instances here - Lady Victoria's Victoria Beckham and Harry and Meghan's Harry & Meghan (two projects whose titles took Netflix teams, I'm assuming, long, hard days of brainstorming and ideating and triple-strength matchas and the hard use of multiple whiteboards to come up with) are prime examples.
The blind spots and black holes in the narratives they present are wide enough for a double wide truck to pass through. You don't have to deftly sidestep the embarrassing or awkward questions when you control the shot list clipboard.
In Victoria Beckham, the poppette turned designer and entrepreneur does not talk about the only Beckham-y story that much of the world cares about, the deep rift with eldest son Brooklyn.
The Duchess of Sussex, similarly, does not address the greatest controversy of her royal career, the allegations of palace bullying and the had been "intent on always having someone in her sights". (The duchess has always denied the claims.)
Late last month King Charles joined them in doco game, opening up the door of Windsor Castle for the premiere of his new one Finding Harmony: A King's Vision which is all about gushing over his decades of environmental campaigning and dedication to his compost heap. (Bezos' Amazon Prime signed the cheques on this one too.)
Has His Majesty been a true pioneer and long defied critics who painted him a flower-knattering weirdo? Does he deserve a nice helping of plaudits? Yes and yes.
But I highly doubt Finding Harmony asked him deuced awkward questions about inconsistencies like his love of travelling gas-guzzling helicopter when it suits him.
Contrast these efforts with 2024's brilliant Martha, made by RJ Cutler of The September Issue fame, about original lifestyle doyenne Martha Stewart. When it came out she publicly took issue with the end result, saying "No, I didn't like it". However, she never pushed back against his right to make what he wanted, having agreed to the project.
Cutler came out and said "I admire Martha's courage in entrusting me to make it. I'm not surprised that it's hard for her to see aspects of it."
"It's a movie, not a Wikipedia page".
And that - that is exactly what a documentary is meant to be, not a handy dandy tool in the arsenal of the PR dark arts.
Both Melania and Charles staged their own premieres for their projects this week - hers had specially made popcorn buckets; his had an Archbishop in attendance. That should give the pair something to talk about should a desperate, fresh outta ideas Sir Keir Starmer decide the UK needs a third US state visit.