How to Use melodrama in a Sentence

melodrama

noun
  • The trial turned into a melodrama.
  • Critics dismissed his work as melodrama.
  • She is starring in another melodrama.
  • The melodrama, in fact, is so high, the film teeters on the brink of satire.
    cleveland, 23 Nov. 2021
  • Huge town that loves its melodrama and is king and queen of the Big Event.
    Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 10 Feb. 2022
  • The film in question was a sci-fi thriller but the case played out in court like a melodrama.
    Brian Melley, ajc, 28 Apr. 2023
  • The body of the series is a bantery young-adult soap, the head a woman-on-the-edge thriller, and the tail a race melodrama.
    Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 8 Mar. 2021
  • Even if a lot of the contestants turned up the melodrama to a hundred.
    James Grebey, Vulture, 8 Dec. 2023
  • Critics of The Swan often rolled their eyes at the melodrama.
    Jensen Davis, The New Republic, 7 May 2021
  • For many people, this will all sound like a lot of melodrama.
    Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 17 Dec. 2021
  • The moon’s clash with Neptune amps up the cosmic melodrama.
    USA TODAY, 15 July 2023
  • She gets sucked into the hellscape that is the Kevin Pearson-Olivia Maine melodrama!
    Maggie Fremont, Vulture, 4 Jan. 2022
  • Yes, Titanic is a soapy melodrama, which didn’t used to be a crime.
    Paul Schrodt, Men's Health, 13 Dec. 2022
  • So then, why do so many fans around here — and elsewhere — get pulled into the melodrama?
    Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 13 Mar. 2022
  • There are the makings here of a melodrama like the ones that Earl and the narrator enjoy watching.
    Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022
  • There is, of course, nothing wrong with choosing high-stakes melodrama as a form.
    David Benedict, Variety, 26 June 2022
  • Scree tell it the way the best history books do: rich in tradition with a flair for melodrama and plenty of time to take in the scenery.
    Pitchfork, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Peretti first performed the fake melodrama in 2017 as a reading at UCB, which was recorded for an episode of the podcast.
    Vulture, 2 Nov. 2023
  • With its initial set-up, Audrey’s Back could have been an illness-of-the-week style melodrama.
    Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Apr. 2022
  • Amid the over-the-top melodrama, Carax crafts some amazing scenes and, later in the film, moving flourishes.
    Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 7 Aug. 2021
  • Erring on the side of melodrama and period-piece reckoning, the film’s visual style adds to that sense.
    Lisa Kennedy, Variety, 8 Aug. 2024
  • But Squid Game was a blunt instrument, a melodrama weaponized for memes and bloodlust.
    Taylor Antrim, Vogue, 19 Nov. 2021
  • Both shows are towers of cotton candy teased by a breeze of cheap melodrama.
    Tom Gliatto, People.com, 12 Oct. 2024
  • But unlike Rukeyser’s erotic melodrama, no one on Too Hot to Handle is allowed to do the deed.
    Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 25 June 2021
  • In the 2000s, My Chemical Romance charged emo with the melodrama of theater nerds and became some of the biggest rock stars on the planet.
    Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2022
  • Mary Weiss, the singer who channeled the melodrama of adolescence as the lead vocalist of the quintessential girl group the Shangri-Las, has died at the age of 75.
    Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Los Angeles Times, 20 Jan. 2024
  • Modigliani’s death, then, is still a couple of years away, but a constant, hacking cough spells out his doom in the manner of classic melodrama.
    Guy Lodge, Variety, 24 Sep. 2024
  • In this season the show has leaned further into melodrama.
    Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 17 Dec. 2023
  • If the outlines of the plot sound like pure melodrama, that's not far off; at least a few of the movie's more outrageous threads wouldn't feel out of place in a telenovela.
    Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 22 Sep. 2021
  • The romantic melodrama tells the story of Silva (Pascal), who rides a horse across the desert to visit his friend Jake (Hawke), a sheriff.
    Clayton Davis, Variety, 21 June 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'melodrama.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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