America: The Motion Picture movie review 2021

MOVIE TITLE: America the Movie

This dark comedy is now available on Netflix

RATING: HARD R

LENGTH: 1 hour 38 minutes

IN A NUTSHELL:

Oh, say can you see…this is going to be my shortest movie review ever because I hated this movie so much.

This patriotic animation is EXTREMELY offensive in every way. Honestly, I’m embarrassed for my international friends to see this. I teach Politics at a college where I try to teach my students how great America is and to revere the Constitution. This dark comedy spits on everything I value. I don’t mind sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek riffs, but the film is so unnecessarily crude and vulgar. I guess that’s what happens when you turn the founding fathers into potty-mouth frat boys.

The movie was written by Dave Callaham, who also voices the “LGBTQ Rights Man” character in the film. The film was directed by Matt Thompson. As clever as they are, the script feels like it was written by 10-year-old boys whose minds live in the gutter. That’s, clearly, the target audience and not my cup of….er…British tea.

THINGS I LIKED:

The fantastic cast is stacked and includes the voice talents of Channing Tatum, Olivia Munn, Judy Greer, Simon Pegg, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, Bobby Moynihan, Jason Mantzoukas, and Killer Mike, for starters.
There’s a lot of clever visual humor.
George Washington is represented as the complete studmuffin he was.
There is plenty of biting social commentary to make us look at who we are as a country.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

I’m disappointed that Netflix chose to air this.
So many historical inaccuracies.
The timeline is totally off and mixes people from different time periods.
Soooo much crude humor.
It’s super woke and constantly rips on white males. The only intelligent people in the story are women.