Americathon

AMERICATHON is not a great movie, but it is not as bad as many have said. I really can add nothing to existing reviews, but I wish to point out a couple of things you may not have realized.

The always fine Canadian Indian actor Chief Dan George plays a wealthy businessman in the film. This was the ONLY film he ever made that did not trade on his typecasting as an elderly Indian. He actually got to do something different---pity it was not in a better film.

The great actor John Carradine filmed a brief scene as a drunken Uncle Sam, which ended up on the cutting room floor, sadly for Carradine fans.

Time capsule of 1970's California life-style...or where it seemed to be headed in the next decade. In the opening we see the residents of California living in permanently parked cars and commuting to work via various bicycles, skateboards, and people-powered scooters. John Ritter plays President Chet Roosevelt, a thinly veiled spoof of then California governor and presidential hopeful Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown (he dated roller skating rock star Linda Ronstadt and slept on a futon). This movie asks the question, what if Jerry became president and Linda the "First Girlfriend?" John Ritter's real life wife Nancy Morgan plays Lucy Beth, President Chet's roller-skating girlfriend. In the eighties the United States is broke and the President decides to throw a telethon on television to raise money. At the time this film was made, most television markets had no more than a few stations and watching Jerry Lewis struggle to keep awake during the MDA telethon was an interesting phenomena. Here Harvey Korman hosts an endless list of bad acts that foreshadows the humor of SCTV. Most of the humor here would be lost on anyone too young to remember the 70's or for those who don't really want to remember. Though the film takes place in the "future" eighties, for campy fun Americathon is an interesting time-capsule of the issues ripe for spoofing at the time.

"Americathon" is about the future (1998) where the state of the USA is so bad that it's incompetent president holds a telethon to raise 400 billion dollars. The movie has surprisingly high production values, and the idea sounds good on paper. It's the script and acting that mess things up a bit.

The movie takes a while to start, mostly to squeeze in some future predictions and hit or miss jokes, but once the telethon does start, it is, yet again, mainly hit or miss jokes (mostly miss, but it did get some laughter out of me). The soundtrack was pretty good though.

Now for the acting: In my opinion, it was one of Harvey Norman's weaker performances, and Zane buzby had a really annoying fake accent (that won her "worst fake female accent" in the Stinkers Awards), but other than those and a few other smaller parts, the acting was pretty average.

Overall, it had average to weak acting, and not that good of a script. Although a neat thing about it is that some of the movie's predictions did come true later on (the collapse of the USSR and cellphones for example). 4/10.

Although the politics of this film is firmly rooted in the seventies, the sexuality is firmly rooted in the nineties. Bill Clinton was supposedly a knock off of Jack Kennedy, but he seems to have taken more lessons for John Ritter in this movie.

The mistress, the sleazy show business connections and scandals. This movie is almost scary.

Do not watch this movie on television. Rent it! The jokes are too fast and too subtle to get in a single viewing with commerical interruptions and no ability to rewind and double-check a gag. Like the orginal "Airplane" the funniest parts of the movie take place in the background. If you blink or miss a phrase, then you will miss the joke.

For example by 1998:

Japan defeated and annexed the Soviet Union in nuclear war;

Britain became America's 42nd State;

the monarch formerly known as Prince Charles is the host at an amusement park called "Limeyland"

Isreal and Egypt (?) Saudi Arabia (?) are conspiring to rule the world; and

NIKE stands for "National Indian Knitting Enterprises"

In short, rent this movie but be quick with the rewind button.....