Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel enjoyed spit-roasting the doc’s trumped-up numbers on Wednesday night
Melania: Twenty Days to History, Amazon’s trumped-up documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, reportedly exceeded box-office expectations, bringing in $7 million when pundits prognosticated torn stubs worth between $1 million and $5 million. And Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel had a field day on Wednesday night with the news.
Colbert claimed the figures need context. “Seven million dollars would seem like a solid opening, until you realize that’s less than 10 percent of the $75 million Amazon spent on the documentary, which includes paying the first lady herself at least $28 million,” he said on The Late Show. “That’s enough cash to put a smile on your face … if that were physically possible.” He also had a Melania Trump impersonator attempt to explain the movie.
Kimmel also questioned a different set of numbers during his Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue. “As of tonight, Melania has a score of five percent on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics,” he said. “That is very low. To put that in perspective, that is one percent lower than Gigli,” the 2003 Bennifer box-office bomb, which Rolling Stone described as “jaw-droppingly awful.” Counterintuitively, he pointed out that the Popcornmeter (fans’ approval rating), is through the roof. “The audience score is 99 percent positive, which is one percent higher than The Godfather,” he said. “And I’m sure Donald J. Corleone had nothing to do with that at all.”
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As far as the money goes, Kimmel joked that the way Amazon is crowing that it’s the best nonmusical documentary opening in 14 years was smoke and mirrors. “I think [that] is a fancy way of saying it only lost tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
Joking that it’s possible that Republican groups purchased bulk tickets to drive up the numbers (though he showed a group of women who called themselves “the Church Ladies,” who were all dressed alike), Kimmel requested a recount. “Send in Tulsi Gabbard and the FBI. Seize the ticket machines, the popcorn buckets, the box-office receipts at every multiplex in America,” he said. He also blasted Amazon ownerJeff Bezos for firing about a third of The Washington Post’s staff after financing Melania.
