America: The Motion Picture - Movie Review

This week was the day of independence for the United States. Just less than two and half centuries ago America declared it would no longer be under the rule of Great Britain, that it had enough of being bossed around by a country that was across the Atlantic Ocean. In America we celebrate it every year with hotdogs, burgers, waving flags about, and way too many fireworks. What if I told you thought everything we learned in the history books was a lie? What if told you that America was founded not just by George Washington, but also by Sam Adams, a female, Chinese Thomas Edison, a cyborg Paul Revere, Geronimo, and John Henry? Not just that, but they fought the British using chainsaw wrists, laser beams, and beer? Well you're right to tell me I'm wrong, but this is also the plot of America: The Motion Picture!

In America: The Motion Picture George Washington (Channing Tatum) is partying with his best friend, Abraham Lincoln (Will Forte) when the evil werewolf, Benedict Arnold (Andy Samberg), kills Abe during a play. With his dying breath Lincoln tells Washington about his plans to unite the thirteen colonies into a single, independent nation and Washington swears to fulfill the dream of his dying best friend. In order to do so he begins to gather a group of misfits with different skill sets, all while continuing to party and kill those nasty redcoats. But there is more to being a leader than just a buff upper body, killer guitar solos, and being able to chug a barrel of ale. George must also discover the other great qualities of a great leader being the British unleash their doomsday weapon that'll destroy democracy for all time.

This is an actual movie guys. I sound high as hell and while I was drinking and pretty drunk when I first watched this film I can confirm that this is a real movie. It came out last week and it is on Netflix for anyone to see. Not just that, but Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the brains behind masterpieces such as The Lego Movie, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and the recent The Mitchells vs The Machines, were two of the main producers of this film. Matt Thompson (one of the people behind Archer) was the director of the film, which is (from what I've heard) a pretty dang good show. But then I found you who wrote the film and it was David Callaham, the man who helped write Doom (2005), The Expendables, and Wonder Woman 1984. I'll get into it more in a bit, but that combination is not a good sign.

Because Lord and Miller were involved in this film though the animation is really damn good. What did they do for this film though to make it visually amazing though? Well it's an entirely 2D film, despite appearing very 3D. The trick they did to pull this off is having a bunch of shapes (faces, body parts, weapons, etc) layered on top of each other in rigs while having a program blend everything together. I would have loved more detail in how they did, but they didn't go too much into the process in their "Behind the Animation" video. The result of all of this though is very smooth animations that appear almost 3D, along with tons of excellent expressions, emotions, and movement.

The biggest problem of the film however is the writing. When I decided to watch this film I was expecting comedy similar to Meet the Spartans or Superhero Movie. Remember those parody films? Those were really dumb movies that made fun of a lot of pop culture and were not supposed to be take seriously. They were parody films and while there are parody films that are incredible (such as anything from Monty Python), in this day and age parody, in terms of film, is a dead and/or lost art. On the internet parody is incredibly commonplace, with endless parodies across social media and Youtube. But for film Hollywood doesn't know how to do it right. Or at least they don't know how to make it genuinely funny.

The writing for A:TMP cannot decide whether to take itself seriously or not, which messes up the tone a lot. When it didn't I was having a good time, but when it did I was either confused or bored. Even with ridiculous satires like this with early history that has robots and lasers and over-the-top stunts you still need consistence with your writing. Often this film would jump around places in very sudden ways, from being captured to meeting new characters. That didn't work for me. David Callaham really didn't get what this movie needed in terms of writing: Not serious, just dumb and fun. How can you mess up dumb fun? And it also just makes the film not very memorable. Only a few days after seeing it I've forgotten my experience watching the film.

This relates to the other major problem the film has: It's not very funny. I wasn't expecting to be laughing my ass off like I'm watching a film from the Cornetto trilogy, but a lot of the jokes in this film didn't get much out of me. What made me laugh the most was the comedy making fun of history and America, that stuff made me laugh. For instance there is a chase scene with a horse and at once point the horse slides/ grinds under a "truck" like it's a motorcycle and I laughed really hard at that. But the film was also littered with pop culture references such as Transporter, Robocop, and Star Wars (so much fucking Star Wars references in this film, even having wooden AT-AT walkers for the British). I was expecting a few of these throughout the film, but I was thinking there would be more shots fired at America (pun not intended) on how America is a screwed up country.

In addition to the pop culture jokes there are also a lot of awkward comedy moments. There is a joke at the very start of the film where Abe's throat is ripped out by werewolf Benedict Arnold. After he falls down and starts gargling blood we see Washington acting very stupid, continually misinterpreting Abe's gesture to look behind him for a whole minute and still standing there is Benedict with blood all over him. It went on for way too long, but worse though is how they pad out this drawn out joke. Washington is just unreasonably stupid in not looking behind him that I was like, "JUST GET IT OVER WITH!" There are multiple, awkward moments like that throughout the film and I felt like the writers had some sort of brain fart and that's why these moments that drag the film are so apparent.

To end on a positive though I think the voice acting was great. Everyone knew exactly what they were getting into and performed their lines very well for the occasion. Channing Tatum and Jason Mantzoukas (Sam Adams) were the most prominent voice actors in this movie, but Andy Samberg was also great. I wish we got more of Simon Pegg as King James because the king was almost a secondary villain with the way Benedict Arnold kept stealing the spotlight. Still, the voice actors for the film did a really great job with what they had been given.

America: The Motion Picture is a film. It's a real film that's really dumb and unnecessarily over-the-top (just like America itself). The visuals were epic and voice acting was really good, but the writing and a majority of the comedy was poorly done, kind of dooming the film and its "turn your brain off" tone. So I say I'd only recommend this film if you're getting drunk with a bunch of your friends. Otherwise it's not worth watching.

Tentative Score: 5.5/10

At least it was better watching this than hearing all my neighbors trying to one up each other with their fireworks. Even when it's almost midnight they've been still firing them off and it's so annoying.