America: Imagine the World Without Her

 Where do I start with this film.  Well, I suppose the Rotten Tomatoes score pretty well sums up what I think.

It's fitting though.  First we watched a film about the making of a crappy movie.  Then we watched a film about a guy who had to review many crappy movies.  Now...we watch a crappy movie.  He should really change the title of this thing to "Straw Man: Can't Imagine an Argument Without One."

So the first obvious problem with this film is the fact that he tried to cram four or five arguments about America into one film.  In doing so he had no time to thoroughly explore any one topic.  Not that I really get the feeling that he wanted to.  Case in point, the cons of capitalism only get a quick pass over.  He says that the argument is that capitalism is detrimental to the consumer.  That's not the argument.  It's the worker that gets stepped on.  And you know what, it's true.  When left on it's own capitalism time and again has used and abused common workers.  There is no better feeding system for socialism and communism than capitalism unchecked.  Even now there are workers iphone factories throwing themselves off roofs because a capitalistic loophole allows Apple to treat these people like slaves.  But we're not about to stop it because we're the consumer and we need our smartphones.  Nothing like this is mentioned in the film.

Next problem I had with it was the stylistic choice of D'Souza putting himself in the film.  Just a personal thing I guess.  I hate it when the filmmaker puts himself in the film.  I do not need to see another 360 degree shot of the director putting on a faux stoic face as he stands outside a national monument.  Your ego is showing!

And another minor nitpick, someone needs to take his copy of After Effects away.  Those recreations wouldn't have been half bad if not for the fact that big pixel clouds were going off every five seconds.

The last (last as in last I want to talk about this turd) problem, and biggest, was the fact that D'Souza didn't seem to have much of an argument beyond, "America is great, agree with me!"  I mean how does he answer slavery?  "Black people had slaves too."  WHAT?!  His answer to the trail of tears?  "Well, we offered them a plot of land and they didn't take it."  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?  Vietnam?  "They were a bunch of torturing a-holes anyway."  This isn't a matter of "making up for it."  In fact, we shouldn't be taking the edge off these things.  America did some messed up stuff.  We need to remember that with clarity so we don't do it again.

Know what, I doubt this guy gives one single crap about any of this.  This was a right wing exploitation film designed to mentally masturbate the patriotic and separate them from their money.  Patriots deserve better than this.  Screw it, done wasting my time on this.  Out of five stars I give it a bucket of greasy turds.