America: The Motion Picture

America: The Motion Picture
Official release poster
Directed by	Matt Thompson
Written by	Dave Callaham
Produced by	Phil Lord Christopher Miller Will Allegra Channing Tatum Peter Kiernan Reid Carolin Matt Thompson Eric Sims Dave Callaham Christian Danley Neal Holman
Starring	Channing Tatum Jason Mantzoukas Olivia Munn Bobby Moynihan Judy Greer Will Forte Raoul Max Trujillo Killer Mike Simon Pegg Andy Samberg
Edited by	Christian Danley
Music by	Mark Mothersbaugh
Production companies	Netflix Animation[1] Lord Miller Productions[1] Floyd County Productions[1] Free Association[1]
Distributed by	Netflix[2]
Release date	June 30, 2021 (2021-06-30)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

America: The Motion Picture is a 2021 American

Netflix released America: The Motion Picture in streaming on June 30, 2021.[3]^[4] It received generally negative reviews from film critics, who criticized it as being unfunny.^[5]

Plot

In July 1776, just after signing the Declaration of Independence, Benedict Arnold appears and murders all of its signatories, blows up Independence Hall, and steals the Declaration. He goes to Ford's Theatre, where George Washington and his childhood best friend, Abraham Lincoln, are watching a play. Arnold tells Lincoln that he is betraying the country, as he turns into a werewolf and bites off Lincoln's neck. Before his death, Lincoln asks Washington to bring the American Revolutionary War to an end naming the future country "America." Washington chases Arnold through the town, killing his soldiers but failing to kill him.

At Lincoln's funeral, Washington meets

They manage to track down Arnold at a Vietnam bar. Although the enemy has fled and Edison blows up the bar, they conclude that the events in Vietnam were not a failure. The team asks for help from master blacksmith John Henry, who is to make a silver bullet for them to kill Arnold. To get the silver, they go to Boston to steal a mass supply of silver spoons from the Titanic. On board the ship, they learn that the British are bathing people in tea so they will come over to their side. They also discover plans of a secret British superweapon but fail to retrieve it because Washington accidentally spills tea everywhere, causing a fire that sinks the ship. Adams then proposes to the others that they will say the Titanic had hit an iceberg and that they were never there.

Arnold kidnaps Martha, who is to become the future wife of

During the war the British attempted to make the revolutionaries British by tainting the clouds with tea creating a tea rain, which was their superweapon from before. Edison, thanks to the power of science, manages to use the British weapons against them, turning tea into beer. When the beer rain falls, the British transform into bros, and it also cures Martha, who had been turned British prior to the battle, changing her into a living Statue of Liberty. A final confrontation occurs with Arnold, who turns himself into a mega-wolf and, after Washington restrains him, is eventually defeated with a silver bullet from Henry, who kills him with America's favorite pastime. A few days later, a ceremony is held for people to watch Adams blow up Arnold’s Monument.

Six months later, on

Production

In March 2017, producers

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 35% of 49 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "America: The Motion Picture is definitely outrageous and possibly patriotic—problem is, it's also not very funny."^[5] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 38 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".^[8]

Amy Nicholson of The New York Times described the film as "a raunchy, aggressively inane cartoon that flips the bird—both onscreen and thematically—to a strain of patriotism that insists that the slave owners who started this country were sober-minded heroes whose vision of democracy remains flawless, bro."^[9] Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post gave the film a score of 1.5/4 stars saying, "The gulf between stupid-smart and just plain stupid feels immeasurably vast when watching America: The Motion Picture, which is clearly aiming for the former but lands squarely in the latter."^[10] Brian Lowry of CNN described the film as "a movie that's loud and annoying more than truly provocative, peppered with pop-culture references that prove cleverer than its rewrite of US history."^[11]

Steve Greene of IndieWire gave the film a grade of C, describing it as "a goofy mishmash of riffs on prominent historical figures", and added: "Most of the time, it’s knowingly stupid, which makes watching it 90 minutes of occasional fun and frequent indifference."^[12] Melanie McFarland of Salon.com wrote: "Rarely have I seen a movie so confident that its viewers not only revel in American benightedness but are eager to identify with it"; she described the film as "not only a waste of time but an insult to ignoramuses."^[13]

Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic gave the film a score of 2.5/5 stars, writing that it "goes all in on its deranged version of the founding of the nation", but added: "It wears you down over time, but especially early on it's too satisfied just to be shocking and irreverent."^[14]

Michael Nordine of Variety was more positive in his review and wrote, "Though loyalists and sticklers for historical accuracy may not consider it their cup of tea, America will likely win over anyone who knows not to take it too seriously."^[15] Randy Myers of The Mercury News gave the film a score of 3/4 stars writing, "Even when you think it’s only acting rude and juvenile just because, it’s much smarter than that, particularly whenever it skewers American attitudes (both conservative and liberal)."^[16]

References