Free Lunch Express

Shame for anyone associating the film Airplane with this junk. Guess the superpacs will fund anything now days.

...but it just doesn't know when to stop milking the gags. I get the feeling that this one was made by people who hate Bernie Sanders too much to recognize anything that is actually funny about him. It seems to focus too hard on being negative. Shame. They could have had something here.

Not only is the movie desperately trying to force a laugh with crude (yet boringly tame) sex jokes and gay jokes I've seen done better even in Adam Sandler flops, its caricature of Bernie is very clearly and openly antisemitic in a way no one could ever find actually funny. Even if you agree with the incredibly slanted politics of this movie, please don't subject yourself to it.

Besides the mild antisemitism and homophobia contained in the film, the writing is truly abysmal with painfully untrue caricatures of prominent political figures played up for laughs until you realize: there's no joke. AOC has a Mexican accent? So funny except for the part where you realize Cortez doesn't have anything but a New York lilt to her voice in real life, and I doubt her district would care if she did have a Mexican accent. Same thing with Ben and Jerry being gay: nobody would care! The sexual comedy is cheap and the events they center around are blatantly false. And I am OKAY with a biopic taking creative liberties, especially if it is satirical! But, when your movie is almost entirely creating false scenarios to deliver bad punchlines, you have to step back and consider it for a second. And then after consideration, throw the script in the trash. Seriously though, this film doesn't even follow the framework of Bernie's life.

Also, while I'm sure the budget was not extensive (it's very obvious) and the expertise of the crew was vastly limited, especially if this was filmed in 2020, the movie does an extremely poor job of creating ambiance. I never for a second got the impression that any scene was supposed to take place in the past. It's just a bunch of characters pantomiming historic costume, speech, and ideas. It's like going to a Civil War recreation in a Costco parking lot.

My one good note: I liked the narrator! He was funny! Sadly, not a valid reason to pick up this sorry excuse of a film.

As an attempted satire, this is definitely so bad it's good -- or perhaps a primo drinking game (but stick with light or American beer for health reasons). It is so incompetent, so dishonest, so transparently revealing of its biases, it provokes more guffawing and snorting than offense. The appearance of Hillary Clinton is a highlight. Since the Washington Post published 16 negative stories on Sanders in 16 hours (in 2016), this sort of thing seems like softball.