America: The Motion Picture is a lot to take in. It is frantic, ridiculous, over-the-top, aggro, and intentionally inaccurate to the point that the entire film is complete and utter nonsense.
I was super excited to watch America: The Motion Picture, as it was produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the team behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, LEGO Movie, and 21 Jump Street. To top it off, the film is filled with some of my favorite comedic actors: Jason Mantzoukas, Bobby Moynihan, Will Forte, Andy Samberg, Judy Greer, Simon Pegg, not to mention Channing Tatum, Olivia Munn, and Killer Mike rounding out the cast.
This is a fantastic array of talent, and yet they could do nothing to make this movie entertaining. I have never been so disappointed watching an animated movie, in fact, it was a struggle to get through. There was so much potential in the premise, yet it failed to deliver on all fronts. The animation was sloppy and dated, the plot was tenuous at best, and the jokes were repetitive and fell flat.
That being said, I didn’t hate every aspect of the movie, it was well cast, as I previously mentioned. It was nice to hear these actors playing off of one another. Particularly the bromance between Will Forte’s Abe Lincoln, a triumphant return to the role he has played multiple times in both LEGO Movies and Clone High, and Channing Tatum’s uber bro George Washington.
If anything, their chemistry makes me yearn for a potential Forte/Tatum team-up in a future episode of the upcoming MacGruber TV show. Moynihan and Mantzoukas are great in every animated role they get, and Pegg and Samberg all but disappear in their roles, as the only two actors to use different voices than their own. The problem is that there is so much going on in America: The Motion Picture that it is nearly unwatchable, by the time you get used to one bizarre creative choice you are hit with another five.
The premise is great, and it’s simple, it is the story of the creation of America, but as an over-the-top action movie that reinvents everything from timelines, supernatural events and creatures, genders of historical figures, and science-fiction technologies. This sounds like it could be a blast, and it would be, but it feels bloated and drawn out, even at a trim ninety-eight minutes. America: The Motion Picture feels like an overlong Rick and Morty episode without the titular heroes to root for.
Instead, we are given Tatum’s ridiculous man-child George Washington as our hero, but he is so unsympathetic, dim-witted, and unlikeable that it’s hard to care about what he does. The rest of the heroes from Mantzoukas’ Samuel Adams, Moynihan’s Paul Revere, Raoul Max Trujilo’s Geronimo, and Killer Mike’s Blacksmith are all equally idiotic and/or unlikeable. Perhaps Munn’s Thomas Edison is the only exception, as she is the only one who seemingly has any objections to the general buffoonery that takes place in the film.
In a way, this film reminds me of the 2012 film, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which was not an altogether good movie, but what it did within the alternate history genre worked, unlike America: The Motion Picture. My biggest issue with America: The Motion Picture is that it never takes itself seriously, and maybe that is the point. It is meant to be unbelievable and outrageous, but there is nothing tying it to reality, or nothing that gives it an emotional core.
Contemporary animation is able to tell complex stories even amidst the most ludicrous ideas, but America: The Motion Picture does not have any emotion to speak of. Instead, it feels like a film written twenty years ago that would have aired on the Spike TV network, where adult animation was pushed to extremes in order to separate it from children’s animation. In 2021 we should expect a higher caliber of animation that is geared to adults, rather than this, an animated spoof movie.
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