America, especially the myths about our founding, offers no shortage of topics for parody. However, America: The Motion Picture goes as broad as possible. Rather than a satire drilling down into the hypocrisies of our founding, America is more comfortable being incredibly silly, juvenile, and like its hard-partying heroes, eager to have a good time. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but the trade-off is that it frequently feels like America is going for the easy, obvious jokes and when those aren’t landing it simply turns up the zaniness in hopes of winning you over with its devil-may-care attitude. The film does get some mileage out of this “anything goes” approach, but by the end America has worn out its welcome, and you find yourself wishing the comedy had worked a little harder at poking fun at our country.
The Declaration of Independence is about to be signed when the villainous Benedict Arnold (Andy Samberg) busts in and kills everyone in the room. Meanwhile, over at Ford’s Theater, best buds George Washington (Channing Tatum) and Abraham Lincoln (Will Forte) are hanging out when Arnold comes along, transforms into a werewolf, and tears out Lincoln’s throat. Desperate to avenge his fallen friend and defeat the threat of the British (aka “The Fun Police”), Washington has to put a crew together. He rounds up the raucous Sam Adams (Jason Mantzoukas), the Chinese and female scientist Thomas Edison (Olivia Munn), the best horse rider around Paul Revere (Bobby Moynihan), and expert tracker Geronimo (Raoul Max Trujillo). Together, they need to get enough silver spoons so that Blacksmith (Killer Mike) can craft a silver bullet to defeat Benedict Arnold before his ally King James (Simon Pegg) unleashes his evil master plan to control the world.
As you can see, America: The Motion Picture is slightly ahistorical. Rather than try to put together any kind of cohesive commentary (which really only arrives intermittently as a throwaway jokes), Matt Thompson’s movie is more comfortable just being aggressively ridiculous and sophomoric, and there are times when that works fine. Thompson, who previously worked on Archer, brings some of that animated series’ sensibilities to America, and that unique blend of sharp irreverence and joyous stupidity gives the film some of its best moments. For its first half, you’ll get consistent chuckles and enjoy the confidence of the film’s tone even if that tone is going for the most outlandish thing possible like a raid on the Titanic or a fight that goes wrong in a club called “Vietnam.”
That latter joke is also where America runs into problem because you can tell that Dave Callaham’s script could go a little further in lampooning the country, but instead it prefers to throw everything at a wall and sees what sticks. This scattershot approach eventually saps America of its edge because the film is usually just going for the goofiest jokes possible, and by the time you get to the big battle where the British have AT-ATs made from double-decker buses and a giant Paul Bunyan is fighting a giant Big Ben transformer, it feels like the film is basically on autopilot. It knows its tone and hopes you’re along for the ride.
For me, I had kind of checked out by the end because the jokes were no longer landing. It wasn’t that the film was “bad” as much as it had become what too much of Netflix’s content is—something to have on in the background. America: The Motion Picture feels designed as something you’ll pop on at your July 4th barbecue, and people can give it a watch if they want or if they’re pulled away by a conversation that’s fine too. The film doesn’t demand your attention, and has no problem serving as casual viewing. If you demand more from America, well, you wouldn’t be the first.
Rating: C+
America: The Motion Picture is streaming on Netflix now.