Mister America

Sometimes you drain the swamp and sometimes the swamp drains you.

(2019) Comedy (Magnolia) Tim Heidecker, Gregg Turkington, Terri Parks, Curtis Webster, Don Pecchia, Manuel Giusti, Ndidi Amadi, Sarah Sherman, Corey Landis, Joe Estevez, Michael Diliberto, James Mane Jr., Melinda McColgan, Jesse Popp, Mark Proksch, Alessandro Serradimigni, Inger Tudor, Gabriel Patay, Dan Anderson, Eric Notarnicola, Ayaka Ohwaki.  Directed by Eric Notarnicola

 

Tim Heidecker is a very acquired taste. One of the minds behind such cult comedy shows as Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show: Good Job! and On Cinema at the Cinema, this mockumentary grew out of a plotline in the latter show. Heidecker, playing a none-too-idealized version of himself, was a movie reviewer who knew nothing about movies alongside Turkington, playing a film geek version of himself.

Heidecker, a schemer with anger issues, organized an EDM festival in San Bernardino, distributed vape pens at the festival with tragic results. Indicted for mass murder, he gets off on a hung jury – all documented in The Trial mini-series. This movie proceeds from there, after Tim in a rage-filled rant on the final episode of the series, threatened to run for District Attorney of San Bernardino county.

This is the results of that rant, a mockumentary following Heidecker’s campaign. Heidecker schemes with his hapless campaign manager Toni Newman (Parks) – who also happens to be the one juror who refused to convict him of mass murder. We also get commentary from the Judge (Webster) who retired after the debacle that was this trial and occasionally, we see appearances from the incumbent (Pecchia) who is more concerned with his Democratic challenger (Giusti) than on Heidecker, much to Tim’s frustration. We also get man-on-the-street interviews with bewildered residents of San Bernardino.

If you’ve seen any of Heidecker’s web series, or his other movie (Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie) you probably have a good idea of whether the sense of humor is going to appeal to you or not. If you’re new to Heidecker, this is as good a spot to start as any; you can pretty much follow along with the story even if you haven’t seen any of the work that preceded it.

This is definitely aimed at young Millennials, particularly of the male persuasion. Heidecker is thoroughly unpleasant and not too smart; Turkington is shifty and obsessive, the kind of movie buff who gives movie buffs a bad name. Heidecker is channeling Trump in a lot of subtle ways, minus the rabid fanbase. I get the sense, however, that he is out to satirize the system and not specific politicians.

The action is fairly slow moving and some impatience sorts might get squirmy by the middle of the film. There are some wonderful bits in here, although the humor is so desert-dry that you might miss them. This takes deadpan to a whole new level.

I will never criticize anyone for having a different sense of humor than I have; everybody’s sense of humor is a highly personal thing and the things I find funny you might not and vice versa. That’s all good; this is really not my own personal sense of humor and I sense that it will appeal to only a narrow band of viewers. I will say that this is pretty typical of what I’ve seen of Heidecker; if you love Between Two Ferns and Adult Swim, you probably will enjoy this a bit more than I did.

REASONS TO SEE: Bone-dry political satire.
REASONS TO AVOID: A slow-moving acquired taste.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of profanity as well as some brief drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The trial scenes were partially re-filmed after Heidecker had filmed them for his The Trial mini-series.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/13/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 64% positive reviews: Metacritic: 42/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Bob Roberts
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Fantastic Fungi

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The Campaign

 

Zach Galifianakis isn’t sure he’s going to get the top billing Will Ferrell promised him.

(2012) Comedy (Warner Brothers) Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Katherine LaNasa, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Cox, P.J. Byrne, Sarah Baker, Karen Maruyama, Grant Goodman, Kya Haywood, Randall Cunningham. Directed by Jay Roach

 

In an American presidential election year, politics tend to move towards the shameless side. Outrageous lies and half-truths are spoken; candidates are smeared, rumors are mongered and dirty tricks are perpetrated.

In a North Carolina congressional district, Cam Brady (Ferrell) prepares to run unopposed for his fourth term in office. He’s always been more interested in being called “Congressman Brady” rather than in doing anything with the office but his popularity takes a huge hit after accidentally sending a racy voice message on the answering machine of a devout Christian family who didn’t appreciate it so much.

This brings a bit of unease to the Motch brothers (Lithgow, Aykroyd), a pair of billionaire industrialist siblings who have outsourced millions of jobs to China. However, they’ve come up with a brilliant scheme to save millions on shipping their products back to the U.S. – it’s called “insourcing” and involves having the Chinese buy huge….tracts of land…and putting up factories, then staffing them with Chinese workers who continue to make pennies an hour. To make it happen, they need a Congressman who can insure they get exemptions on the minimum wage and it doesn’t look like Brady, whose district the Motches have designs on, will have enough political capital after this latest escapade, to help them much.

The Motch brothers need a new pliable candidate, one they can control and they think they’ve found one in Marty Huggins (Galifianakis) who is a somewhat simple and somewhat effeminate tour guide operator in the county whose father (Cox) is the oily, rattlesnake-mean former campaign manager for Jesse Helms. Marty, who’s always wanted to run for office, wants to make his daddy proud. Daddy wants Marty not to embarrass him. And Marty’s brother Clay (Goodman) just wants to tickle Marty because Marty’s bowels tend to void when tickled.

Marty’s kind of a shlub but that all changes with the arrival of Tim Wattley (McDermott), a snake oil-slick campaign manager who proceeds to do a life makeover on the new candidate, much to the chagrin of Mitzi (Baker), Marty’s timid BBW of a wife.

Thus the campaign ensues, with each candidate smearing the other through attack ads, debates and innuendo. Things start to get messy; Cam’s hot but ambitious wife (LaNasa) moves out when it looks like Marty might win; Cam accidentally slugs a baby in the jaw with a closed fist.

However, when Marty finds out what the Motch Brothers, in collusion with his father, are up to, he grows himself a pair and stands up to them. This leads to Tim moving over to Cam’s moribund campaign…and resurrecting it. But which one of these two knuckleheads will win out in the end?

This is meant to be political satire which I suppose circa century 21 makes some sense. Still, when I think of political satire I think of classics like, for example, Dr. Strangelove. This doesn’t measure up to that nor should you go in expecting that it would.

This is more or less an Apatow-esque comedy masquerading as political satire. While the identity of the Motch brothers isn’t fooling anyone (Koch brothers anyone?) and Cam Baker shares some DNA with John Edwards, the movie studiously tries to avoid party mudslinging on the surface by making the Democrat (Brady) as objectionable as the Republican (Huggins). The reality though is that they’re both essentially Republicans – and the joke is that there really isn’t much of a difference between them, even to them both finding out they are good-hearted in the end (not that it’s much of a spoiler).

Ferrell has played this character dozens of times, a combination of Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby and George Bush. For Galifianakis, this is a character not unlike the one he played in Due Date. It’s not a bad mix, the two of them – but it ends up with a kind of Frank Capra-esque ending that belies the cynical tone most of the rest of the movie takes.

I could have used a bit more laugh-out-loud sequences, although there are a few moments which got me chortling but to me the movie seemed on the bland side and never really had the courage of its own convictions. Trying not to alienate the electorate? Don’t make a political satire then.

REASONS TO GO: Satirizes the current American political process without getting too party-specific.

REASONS TO STAY: Not nearly as funny as it should be. A bit more cynical than some might like.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s plenty of crude sexual content, a bit of nudity, some semi-foul language and a bit of violence.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Aykroyd plays a wealthy brother like the type he bested in Trading Places. Life imitating art?

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/14/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 67% positive reviews. Metacritic: 49/100. The reviews are mixed but trending towards the positive.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Primary Colors

EASTBOUND AND DOWN LOVERS: Shawn Harwell, one of the co-writers of the movie, also is a writer for the quirky cable series.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Jack and Jill