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Written and directed by American comedian Bobcat Goldthwait comes this tale of Frank (Joel Murray), a downtrodden sad sack of a man whose miserable and lonely existence away from an estranged wife and daughter is accompanied by insomnia, noisy neighbours, reality television in all it's most evil manifestations and an ever increasing lack of patience. After losing his job and discovering he has an inoperable brain tumour, Frank decides he's had enough of the ignorance and general lack of moral principles he sees permeating through everyday American life and sets about directly addressing the problem…with a gun. Aside from the overly graphic and wanton violence, this is a film with a lot to say. It's almost as if writer Goldthwait is himself getting stuff off his chest that's been festering for years. Much of the dialogue is indeed bitingly funny, including some incisive rants about the pernicious nature of American Idol type singing competitions. The film does sometimes forget itself (one holiday montage sequence seems a loose fit) and some of the murders which Frank and his willing side-kick Roxy (Tara Lynn Page) carry out might threaten to cancel out the more intelligent aspects of the message for some. What is certain is that God Bless America will divide opinion. Frank's a walking contradiction, a liberal man who fights his cause with right-wing methods to find a stage to air his liberal views. This is a film for everyone who's imagined but would never carry out. For those who want to instantly silence that barking dog down the street that's preventing valuable sleep before that big presentation at work the next day. It's for those of us who sit silently in cinema seats respecting other people's right to enjoy the experience only to have ignoramus's gibbering on mobile phones or kicking the back of your seat. While the film might draw criticism for it's depictions and excessive"preachiness", i found it agreeably acerbic. I wonder if Simon Cowell feels the same way.

The moment I read the synopsis for God Bless America, I had to see it. It was one of the first films I signed up for at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and one I had to wait most of the week to get the opportunity to see. I wanted to adore it, despite hearing mixed things about it. But as I found out, this experience might never have been intended to be adored.

Frank (Joel Murray) is sick of everything in his life. His neighbours are inconsiderate, his daughter hates him, and he cannot connect with anyone at work because all they want to do is sit around and talk about reality television. After he finds out he has an inoperable brain tumour, Frank sets out to rid the United States of the filth that corrupts it. He finds an early fan and confidant in precocious teenager Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), and decides to bring her along for the ride with him.

God Bless America is not so much of a film as it is a treatise on what is wrong with pop culture in the modern United States. Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait packs the film full of allusions and satires of reality television primarily, but trickles down to political news shows, celebrity gossip, social networking, texting, and more. Despite how cheap it looks, he manages to depict just the right imagery, the right dialogue and the right attitudes to truly sell the ideas the film brings up. And as the film starts to edge closer and closer to real life, Goldthwait starts getting his characters to start dishing out justice in the most ridiculous ways possible. He does and says what a lot of people are scared to, and bravely attempts to dissect and take down an institution that has been thriving for well over a decade. Nothing is sacred or off limits. While the film was clearly intended to shock and disgust with how darkly hilarious it is, it also sets out to teach and not so secretly try to right the wrongs we continue to allow invade our lives.

But this element of teaching veers into the realm of preaching, and is what holds Goldthwait's film back from being truly enjoyable. While I was initially amused at watching Murray's Frank spout musings about the human condition and what is wrong with society, that amusement quickly faded. By around the halfway mark, it becomes increasingly clear that the film has no real set direction or even a real point of existing. It is an extended rant that would have worked out better as a piece of stand-up. You can easily tell where Goldthwait has veered off track and lost any idea of what points he wanted to make, and he struggles to find his way back more often than he should. The film clocks in at just about 100-minutes, but twenty of those minutes could be chopped out if he stopped circling around and just make his points.

And what's worse is that outside of an absolutely stunning realization, the thesis if you will, during the bloodsoaked finale, he does not cover any real new ground in what he is getting Frank to talk about. These tropes he is taking down one by one are things people have been complaining almost as long as they have existed. Michael Moore is consistently churning out documentaries about them every few years. Yes, the majority of the population around the United States (and hell, worldwide) are embracing these ideals and not thinking any differently. But God Bless America is too subversive a film to ever conceivably be watched by these kinds of people. Does Goldthwait really think he can shock these people into submission with his vivid speeches and grotesque and borderline terrorist tactics? Does he think he can get them to rethink everything they follow and do in their everyday lives? If not, then why bother making the film?

Goldthwait claims that God Bless America is not meant to be a political film. But unless he really wants people to just laugh and forget about it moments later, then there is really no other way one can possibly read it.

While I felt for how agonizing some of the dialogue must have been to deliver, I really enjoyed Murray's performance as Frank. He is a bit player in dozens of TV shows and movies, and it is nice to see him finally get a leading role. He plays Frank as an upstanding and concerned citizen, one who truly believes in the war he is fighting. He has a quiet intensity about him, and seeing him jump between a tongue- in-cheek innocence and a full blown sociopath is truly remarkable. I am glad that Goldthwait took a chance on him, and I can only hope more directors will follow suit in the future. Barr, much like Chloë Moretz in Kick-Ass, is a revelation. She is ridiculously hilarious and downright terrifying all at the same time. From the moment she walks on-screen, she has an aura about her that never dissipates, allowing her to truly make something of her character even with some rather awful dialogue.

I think in the end, I appreciated God Bless America more than I actually enjoyed it. There are some really funny scenes sprinkled throughout, and just as many deeply thought-provoking moments. But it is a film that gets too full of itself much too often, and loses track of what it wants to be even more so. Goldthwait is a talented filmmaker (even if he shamelessly cribs his action beats and styles from some rather obvious influences), but I think he could have easily improved on the flaws that plague the film. I hope that the distribution deal he received affords him some time to make the necessary cuts. There is a truly great film somewhere in there, just waiting to appear.

7/10.

The problem with many reviews is that we seek to 'analyse' and not just accept. We look for hidden agendas instead of just taking something at face value. This film is a gem...the main character and his life were easily acceptable and plausible and his outlook on modern American life whilst predictable, knowing the movie's theme...was perfectly understandable. There is a wonderful dark humour running throughout the story and whilst it does stretch the imagination boundaries at times you think to yourself 'so what ..I'm enjoying it'. I could not think of one victim in this film that I also wouldn't have minded bumping off and Tara Lynne Barr is perfect as Frank's young accomplice. One of my favourite scenes involved Frank's visit to his doctor but then I always did have a twisted sense of humour. I recommend you watch this if only as a release valve for your pent up frustrations with modern society and TV talent shows.

Bobcat Goldthwait's latest feature as writer & director is a hilarious & articulately written black comedy commentary on contemporary American culture, or lack thereof. Yes, mass media's influence on the devolution of society has been tackled before (Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers & Euros Lyn's Fifteen Million Merits, for example) and the script has it's issues (which are plausibility/suspension of disbelief related IMO) but the dialogue does have monologues & diatribes that I think really do shine. The acting is FTW, and the whole small budget meets meaningful repartee feel of the piece threw me back to Mark Osbourne's 2000 film "Dropping Out". Most definitely catch it if you can! 8D

I saw this movie's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. I loved it. Bobcat Goldthwait has given us a hilarious comedy that perfectly satirizes our self-centred, celebrity-obsessed, uncritical age. Throughout the dark comedy Joel Murray delivers a perfect performance as one of the last thinking men, who has grown weary of life and society. In between the action and the comedy, Joel Murray's character delivers scathing indictments of society that had the Toronto audience break out into spontaneous applause. Besides being hilarious, this movie is really an interesting exploration of the insensitivity and thoughtlessness of modern popular culture. This movie is the antidote our "reality show," celebrity-obsessed, know-nothing-and-proud-of-it culture. The film's outlandish violence perfectly captures Horace Walpole's epigram, "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." Unfortunately, as the movie points out, few people are now capable of either thinking or feeling.

'GOD BLESS America': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

A dark and very violent political satire (as well as social commentary) written and directed by actor/comedian turned filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait. The story revolves around an insurance salesman who's recently been fired from his job and discovered he's terminally ill who decides to go on a killing spree to rid the world of it's most morally deprived citizens, before he exits it as well. He teams up with a 16-year-old girl who shares his anger. The movie is a little hard to watch given the subject matter and has a somewhat nihilistic feel to it but the political commentary is spot on and the filmmaking is equally topnotch.

Joel Murray stars as Frank, an insurance salesman who's fired from his job for sending flowers to a co-worker (as well as using company records to look up her address), which she deemed as sexual harassment. He later finds out the migraines he's been suffering are the effect of a terminal brain tumor, which his doctor says is inoperable. He has a daughter who despises him and is spoiled rotten by his ex-wife (Melinda Page Hamilton). All this combined with his increasingly negative views on America and the rude hateful citizens which inhabit it cause him to go on a killing spree. He finds unlikely assistance in the form of a 16-year-old girl named Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), who's equally upset with society.

The film is sort of like the movie 'SUPER' (from last year) except darker, or you could say it's like 'NATURAL BORN KILLERS' except lighter, or 'BONNIE AND CLYDE' (which it references several times). It mocks 'AMERICAN IDOL', reality TV, conservative talk shows and other pop culture filth. It's commentary is intelligent and right on (although perhaps a bit too harsh at times). The fact that the lead characters are so insightful and well intentioned is the movie's biggest flaw though. How can such likable and otherwise seemingly well balanced people resort to such idiotic and pointless violence. It's like a horror movie where the heroes are the serial killers, which is extremely hard to take as a viewer. It leaves you torn about exactly what the film is trying to say. Which I think is it's biggest strength. A movie that makes you think that much and makes you that uncomfortable deserves credit. Goldthwait makes a very impressive writer and decent director as well! This movie is definitely not for everyone and extremely hard to watch for most but it does have some great social and political commentary and does what a movie meant to disturb should.

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I loved this movie. This is "The One" Feel-Good movie I've been missing since long time.

Each day and night after work or watching world and local TV news if you start feeling frustration because of stupidity of people, politicians, dictators, and pointless empty TV shows like the ones in this movie, you need something to calm yourself down.

This is a movie that takes all those rage and poison out of your mind and make you sleep well at night.

It is as satisfying as playing Doom in God Mode, just to shoot those Evils with that Shotgun or your shiny BFG9000, after those long, long meetings with stupid PowerPoint slide readers!

It is as satisfying as a long run in Castle Wolfenstein, bringing down those Nazis shouting Achtung, one by one, after a long night working after hours ... again!

It is as satisfying as scratching and slowly removing that crust off your healing wound. It hurts, tingles and your mind says stop, but you continue playing with it because feels so good!

This movie is like Daily Show on steroids! Take this movie as a medication to your frustrations and calm down.

Instead, I liked it and would gladly watch it again. God Bless America had so much potential. Its first half an hour or so goes as you expect, over the top dark humor with non-stop truth hitting relentless social commentary and then...Roxy walks into the movie. From this point on, unfortunately, without saying much, the movie falls into several paradoxes and loses its focus.

At its core, GBA is a good social satire with nonstop commentary on the problems with pop culture and society, but on the same coin, the movie tries so hard that it feels like a rant by an angry liberal rather the good satire it initially set out to be. Furthermore, Roxy becomes one of the characters you want dead as the movie goes and her character, along with her and Frank's relationship, appears so idealized and forced, that it just affects the movie for the rest of its running time.

The good, however, lies in the great shooting scenes, some of the great commentary made by Frank (most of what Roxy says makes you roll your eyes if not question what in the world the movie was going for), the dark humor, the targets for satire, the over the top story, its entertainment, and overall its a solid 9/10 movie but...

The bad lies in the second act, on Roxy's faulty and forced character, its endless rants between our two main character that makes you want them to kill themselves as the next person on their killing spree, the people targeted (whats wrong with high fives and country music? When did this movie become about taste rather than appropriate satire part?) and so on...it just bit itself in the tail.

I really wanted to love this movie. I almost did. Instead every time I went to smile and applaud the commentary, something matter of taste or the character discontinuity got in the way...good movie, definitely one everyone should watch, but sadly, for what it could have been and set out to be, very flawed.

What a great movie. It's rather as if Goldthwait has made an answer to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers by way of Mike Judge's Office Space. Through the eyes of Joel Murray's Frank, we see a variety of society's ills and thankfully, Goldthwait doesn't dwell on them. To do so would be like gawking at the stupidity when you walk into a Walmart; it's just going to make you dwell longer at the stupidity on display, and you are still in a Walmart.

Instead, we get one of those movies that you either are along with or you aren't, you get or you don't. If you get it, you wish that Frank had a few more monologues, if you don't, you'd think it was advocating random shooting sprees.

Thankfully the script and Murray's brilliant portrayal of Frank has him as a principled, moral character who has his suicide interrupted by one terrible reality TV show too many. Along the way he teams up with a psychotic schoolgirl. He's rebelling violently about what society has become, she's rebelling against what society is.

It isn't a huge film, without a large budget, but well made. I felt that it worked best compared to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which showed spree killers as celebrities. In God Bless America the characters lament that they haven't even made the news. But in the end, Stone's film glories this shallow quest for fame while Goldthwait's film answers it, showing what happens to America when everyone is unkindly reaching for it.

I liked the concept of the film. There was a lot of dark humor and my fears that I would grow bored with the level of guns and violence, thankfully, did not come to fruition. Where the film starts to go off the rails for me was the reliance on soliloquy to get Bobcat's point across. Especially at the conclusion it seems that they are really hitting you over the head with a mallet. Yes we get it no need to bludgeon the film goer with the obvious.

A lot of the dark comedy bits were really well done. However, some of the preachiness involved in the film sort of dragged the script down. As I mentioned previously, the ending was questionable at best as the Frank (Murray) gives a long soliloquy just in case you had not been paying attention for the last 99 minutes.

check out our full review at 3guys1movie.com

Hey Bobcat Goldthwait! I hate all the same crap about American culture as you do!

You know what I else I hate? Bland cinematic litanies of crap that the filmmaker can't stand. I hate American movies that have no real narrative ambition except to bitch and plug the filmmaker's rantings into the mouth of his main character... over and over and over again. I hate movies about people who sit around in hotel rooms debating which music is cool and which isn't. I hate movies that don't even have the balls to be straight up exploitation, even though they're obviously fetishizing violence. I hate trite pieces of cinema with no true center. I hate it when a protagonist in a movie is saddled with the rhetoric of decency, yet doesn't do anything proactive at all until he turns to violence. He doesn't turn off the shrieking TV and read a book during his late night bouts with insomnia. He doesn't assert himself like a self- respecting human being on his douchey neighbors or take command of his own life in any way, until he does so through violence. So really, he's just as weak and lost in our "uncivilized society" as anyone else in the flick. And ultimately, for his unearned high moral ground, just as annoying.

Uninspired, unambitious, ethically-muddled, satirically challenged, broadly realized cinema is just as much a part of the problem as bitches with cellphones in movie theaters.

Bobcat "Get off my lawn" Goldthwait, it's not that your hyperbolic vision of America doesn't have some truth to it, it's that we deserve a far more intelligent and interesting attack on what's wrong with our selfish/media-addicted/materialist society than this.

God Bless America – CATCH IT (B+) God bless America is going to be remembered as sarcastic violent take on what American has come to. America is now sucked up into the this pop corn culture, sink into social media face book/twitter, fascinating by the celebrities' lifestyle, turning Americans into jokers on shows like American Idol etc and most importantly putting up their families on TV on the name 0of reality for fame and money. In this movie a terminally old man consider him Clyde and 16years old girls consider Bonnie go on killing spree of the social parasites. If you start analyzing the movie then it's pretty much messed up like why they don't get caught? They're on tape? Their hand prints are all over crime scenes. They drive same car all over USA. If you don't analyze these factors and just enjoy the movie as they are trying to tell us what was important and what has now become important you will laugh your *** off. The dialogues of the movie are the best part of the movie, its clever, witty and 100% true. The movie bash the reality shows, the celebrities, the news anchors, Kardashians, American Idol, Glee and jerks all around us. Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Bar make an awesome unlikely duo. They work great together and make you believe all this for some time. Bryce Johnson and Joel Murray's argument is may favorite in the whole movie. I enjoyed the whole movie except for the ending because there was not a good speech in the end and suddenly the girl come son stage from nowhere so kind of weird but anyhow it's still Pretty darn Hilarious & Violent.

I love this movie, Don't get me wrong its a little under budget but I think the message gets across and is true!!! I wish everyone I know would watch this movie. I think this movie knows its place and is written and directed as so. I can't wait to recommend this to all my friends. I like the actors they feel real for the story line and do the things we all wish we could do. I can only hope a film like this can shake up people and not just shrug it off as a small film. This film does tackle a lot of social problems that exist in society today. This is not a JUNO film!! This has a touch of reality that America wants to deny and a extreme that seems to escape every one as it is rubbed in your face over and over again and the easier the lie the easier we swallow

God Bless America! this movie, this is one wake up call! This movie is about how messed up our current generation is. I myself am 21 years old but i have enough maturity to know whats right and wrong, whats acceptable and whats shameful. But kids younger than me (Even in India) are so fcked up right now, i cant imagine the horrible future we have ahead of it.

All in all, God not only bless America but this entire moron world filling up fast with nothing but kids and teenagers idoling Jersey Shore so called stars, iPod Blackberry fanatics and other such low level idiots.

Though i don't see how even God can help us now. Frustration aside, WATCH THIS MOVIE!! but try not to kill someone after watching it, as am i trying desperately now..!!

I've heard about the movie from a guy that was ecstatic about it. Frustrated, as many educated people are, with the ridiculous, stupid and petty show we get on TV every day, he felt vindicated by this movie in which a guy is killing people because they promote the worst. However, in the end, no matter how frustrated I would get, I can't empathise with the main character. Not because he kills people, but because he does it only when he loses his job and he is going to die. That reduces his entire discourse and killing spree to a mere psychotic breakdown. The girl wasn't a lot better either, with her impulses to kill anything she did not agree with, she was just as close minded as the people she wanted to kill.

In a way, it reminds me of Falling Down, with the same idea of a man who can't take the ugliness of the world anymore. But he always had the option to turn the TV off and he did not, making himself his own victim. The lack of realism in the film was also something to throw me off the plot. And the last nail in the coffin is the melange of themes taken from other films: the brain tumour, the unfair laying off on fake harassment grounds, the estranged family that lives with another man, the precocious female companion (and no, I don't mean he stole it from Dr.Who).

The conclusion is that for me this is a failed film. The real problem is not the idiotic content on TV, but the myriads of idiots that like it. The film also reminds me of the movie The Last Supper from '95, a much better satire of society and with a lot more direct impact. If you want to vent your frustration, watch Falling Down. If you want a powerful social commentary, watch the Last Supper. This movie... is just a little sad.

This movie is great,intelligent,funny at times,saddening at other times.

Acting by Joel Murray was brilliant.I don't recognize Ms Tara Lynne Barr but I predict for her a bright full acting career.

The movie asks why American people turned into aggressive,mean,unrelenting,hellbent on hurting others creatures.

And why American children became ill-behaved,spoiled,nightmare begins.

It may force to think about things in live,or it may not.it all depends on your character,your way of life.

But believe me,you should watch that movie.

this film is exactly what i felt about America, the big, fat, over-weighted, arrogant, self-centered, loud, shallow, ridiculous, war-mongaring, you-broke-my-window-i-kill-your-whole-family-burn-your-house-down self justified obnoxious country. highway patrol and local police ambush citizen drivers for making up the budget cut, the superior court representing the law as the traffic fine collector; blue cross discriminating and profiling the subscribers only by ages, they increase your premiums by leaps and bounds once you reach 50 or 55, even you rarely visited any doctor's clinic; threatening citizens by not reported to the jury duty call; everything is taxed; federal reserve is nothing but controlled by a bunch of bankers; unions against the enterprises; benefits, overtime, pensions are always more important than a stable job; entertaining business controls common peoples' way of life, way of thinking; hip-hop and rap always with nasty gangsta brain wash violence and hatred. morons could become two-term president, actors could become governor or even president, and you call it 'the American dream'. illegal aliens could get food stamps and could always buy more stuff than we tax paying families; churches have become the farming zones for real estates agents, lenders and handymen; senate and congress, federal or state, never ever served the voters but themselves; so many dogs in almost every house, barking day and night; only poor kids or illegal immigrant young men join the marine, wounded, crippled or died in foreign countries that we tried to liberate. and this is America that you try to fool yourself that this is the only land that god blessed.

this movie really released certain resentment i felt for this country. there are still a lot of good and decent people in it, but they are not the ruling ones and never would be. but using a few bullets to bless those folks who make us suffered indirectly is not the way to solve the problems either. gun nuts always telling us: 'it's not the guns that kill people; it's the people who kill people.' yeah, that's right, as long as these people killers are untouchable, just bite the bullets and keep suffering, cuz it is we who have made those people become untouchable, so we deserve all of it!

Speaking in November 2009, American social-critic Christopher Hedges argued as to how America's decline, certainly as an empire, was inevitable – he lamented how Americans have become 'disconnected from who (they) are, what (they) represent and where (they're) going' and how they have essentially been kept in a perpetual state of adult-infancy through a series of badly judged political decisions over the last 40 years. The result of this, he asserted, was that people will begin to 'search for a demagogue or a saviour that promises moral renewal, vengeance and the glory.'

On the back of this, and if the depiction of America (or more importantly, Americans) in Bobcat Goldthwait's film "God Bless America" is at all accurate, I would say that there was almost certainly something in the fact that the British Channel 4 network decided to air "God Bless America" on the night of Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US Presidential Election. To understand the deeper meaning of this, one needs to first understand the hypothesis of Goldthwait's film, but also be a little more familiar with the basic view of those such as Hedges who, if his public lectures and television interviews on the topic of America's direction are anything to go by, seems to have had much of what he has to say heard and then adapted to the screen right here.

In conjunction to his other remarks, Hedges commented on as to how America is shifting from a 'print' based society to an 'image' based society – how it was 'moving away from nuanced thought and from the struggle with ambiguity' for 'jargon and clichés'. He continued: 'We are seeing the dying gasps of a culture that is severing itself from print and entering an age of terrifying illiteracy', which will in turn supposedly give rise to certain horrifying things....

The crux of this evident in "God Bless America" – an ambitious, morbid comedy which seems to fuse the droll, even blackly empty, tonality of "America Psycho" with the sheer terror of the apparent barrenness of life as terrifically demonstrated in "Taxi Driver". It is confrontational and quite upsetting, but then most films which try to explore the fatuity or frustrations of a given era are.

Narrative is secondary to subtext here, but for the sake of simplicity I will reveal that the film centres around a middle aged American man called Frank (Joel Murray), who is divorced; lives alone and struggles over custody of his young daughter. He hates his life and those around him. Oddly, he seems to insist on engaging with the very thing he despises most: television, which glamorises fatuity; revels in the obscene and promotes a sort of sordid liberalism where everyone, no matter how contemptible they really are, is a champion in some of the ways Hedges argued. Away from home, he finds himself unable to escape the idiotic monotony of his co-workers and neighbours, who speak of nothing else but low-brow pop-culture. An exemplar of this divide lies in as to how he trades a BOOK with the receptionist at his desk job.

Frank is tipped over the edge when he is fired, in what appears to be a statement from the film on how maddening modern political correctness is when it comes to talking to/making moves on women, before completely loses contact with his daughter. Put briefly, the ingredients bubble up into an explosive rage forcing him across America and it isn't long before he and a young female accomplice named Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), whom he meets along the way, are in way over their heads.

The film's tone is flippant throughout, and events seem to have been transplanted to an unreal universe which still strangely seems to be grounded in the real world. The characters are often viciously unlikable and hideously hypocritical – Roxy's left-wing mantra sees her rage against right-wingers who lobby for foreign wars and are against gay-marriage yet exudes a punk-fascism herself.

It is remarkable as to how cine-literate the film is – done deliberately, I'm sure, to disorientate the audience as it makes its overall point on the commoditised nature of American culture. Roxy's backstory is remarkably similar to Mallory Knox's in "Natural Born Killers"; a scene in a lay-by with a state trooper calls to mind "Psycho"; the leads dress at one point like "Bonnie and Clyde" and Samuel L. Jackson's riff on AK-47's from "Jackie Brown" is rehashed seemingly without shame.

Goldthwait's film is not generic, yet we have seen films like it in the past; it is satirical, yet seems to rage against a society whose fascination with funny quick-fixes and the visual image essentially began in the 1960's with a boom in the satire genre. It despises popular culture, yet cannot help but draw influence from it so as to either prove its point or garner a few laughs. The film plays like an amalgamation of the ideas put forward over time by various commentators warning where television; celebration of trash and the Capitalist free market might lead. It is Neil Postman merged with Hedges by way of the now conventional point on how the Western world has largely adopted the model of the universe found in Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World": where Orwell feared totalitarian regimes banning books, the reality now is that no one is willing or able to read them having been 'educated' out of liking high-culture and taught to sneer at intellect.

Few things have changed since "God Bless America's" release, but then it has only been three years. In Britain, the 2016 series of "X-Factor" made popular a would-be rapper named Honey-G, who was evidently terrible, and yet came to represent a true-to-life version of the Steven Clark character found within this very film – the fact they are so bad makes them so good. The fact "God Bless America" is as good as it is warrants you seeing it.

This movie is less of a film and more of a podcast with random footage slapped on top. From start to finish, it feels like you're stuck in a room with people who won't stop yapping their own personal political opinions at you, as if you're trapped in a poorly produced talk show. It's pandering to a specific crowd, constantly hammering its points in the most obnoxious way possible, and somehow it thinks it's being bold or cool. Spoiler: it's not.

The movie's attempts at satire feel forced and cringe-worthy, with zero subtlety or depth. Instead of telling an engaging story, it just regurgitates opinions that feel outdated, even by 2011 standards. Watching it now feels even worse-like being subjected to the most annoying podcast from 2024, full of self-righteousness and finger-pointing without any meaningful substance.

It could've been so much better if it had actually focused on being a movie. If it developed its characters and story instead of awkwardly disguising a rant as entertainment, it might've been worth watching. But instead, it's just an irritating, try-hard experience that grates on your nerves.