Last party 2000 - La décmocratie américaine dans tous ses états

For most of its duration, this entertainiing documentary seems

to aim at the "both sides are identical in that they are equally

indebted to corporations" logic until the very end when the Bush

bashing starts which doesn't favor the democrats as much as it

illustrates the absurdity of the 2000 election. In a no win situation it

always seems prescient in afterthought to impale the winner. At first this stance appears inconsistent until it becomes clear

that this film proposes the Green Party and Ralph Nader as a the

supposed solution to this both sides bad pardigm . The bloom is far off the rose for this argument because it was

Nader who in fact enabled the "victory" of Bush thus underscoring

the danger of naivete and over simplification during the electoral

process. The jingoistic attitude of America continues to this very

writing. Now, much thanks to Nader and political thinking like the left

leaning bias ultimately revealedin this film, we have ironically

arrived at Bush and a war about which the spy novelist / cold

warrior John LeCarre has written; " Don't pretend that this is not

religiously based. Don't pretend this is not a crusade. Don't

pretend this isn't about oil. Don't pretend this isn't about making a

fortune and keeping the American people on their heels in fear"

Aside from that Mrs Lincoln, it was a pretty good play. six

The Party's Over is a carefully constructed and thought-provoking look at both the democratic and republican parties, centering around each of their conventions before the 2000 election. The film makers got access to both conventions and do a wonderful job of showing the amazing hypocrisy of the US democratic process.

The film makers are clearly and unapologetically left-leaning, but that doesn't translate to sparing anyone. Only the greens come out well, but even that is undermined by the outcome of the 2000 election, which is the film's enervating denouement.

Mr. Hoffman does a great job with the interviews, becoming more confident as he moves along, and there's a charming exchange between him and Michael Moore, to whom he bears physical similarity.

An interesting look at both political parties in America, The Party's Over is a movie about just that. A look into the 2000 election for President and how corrupt and misguiding both political parties are and how the youth of today has been programmed to become consumers. Although the movie did not have a large budget to use, the film scores big with its audience. Sad but true, the Party's Over captures what is happening in Washington DC and in the White House. The addition of having celebrity interviews, a segment on Ralph Nadar's involvement with the 2000 election and the hidden corruption behind the Bush and Gore administration makes the documentary a delight, no matter what political party you belong to.

Straight away, I'll disclose that I'm fascinated by politics and my views are probably to the left of most Nader voters, yet I've given over 5% of my income to the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates and pressure groups traditionally allied with the Democratic Party in recent years.

This documentary takes the same cynical view of American politics most people use as an excuse to not involve themselves in the democratic process: Republicans and Democrats are the same. I think that this has been refuted by past five years--and it was simplistic and naive, at best, to think so before then. We get side-tracked by tactics of the LA and Philadelphia police departments, which would be good grounds for a POV documentary on PBS, and a number of other dead-end subtopics. Then, we get to see a few things C-SPAN and the networks failed to show, like the shadow convention--one of the reasons I give this a low average rating, rather than a poor rating.

What this documentary and so many others fail to disclose is that we do live in a multi-party democracy within a two party system. The different factions within the Democratic and Republican Parties essentially give us the same choices one sees in the advanced multi-party democracies of Europe and elsewhere. We get to vote in primaries, they don't. Very briefly, Hoffman allows Barney Frank (always wise, witty and worthy of one's attention) to tell it like it is: Those on the left have abandoned the Democratic Party, if not the democratic process entirely, allowing it all to drift to the right. Simply put, most of those on the far right vote Republican. Most of those on the left don't vote, or waste their votes on people like Nader. Hence, Republicans win, Democrats lose. Unfortunately, Congressman Frank's wisdom (two minutes?) is almost wasted among the garbage here. I don't mean to split hairs here, but Rep. Frank was incorrectly identified with (R-MA) rather than (D-MA). Evidence of careless fact-checking? A thoughtful discussion with William Baldwin was the only other redeeming factor here. Unfortunately it was edited out, presumably because his was a progressive voice somewhat favoring the Democratic Party. It's among the extras on the DVD. Interestingly, among the predictions asserted by those being interviewed in this film, his are most eerily true.

All in all, I would praise this if it were an effort by high school students. However this was done by people who should know better. Hopefully now they do.

Political neophyte and open-eyed observer Hoffman leads us on a trail through the Presidential campaign and election of 2000. The film is a depressing illumination of the selfishness pervasive in America (as a synonym for Libertarianism in the Conservative movement), of the events leading up to the election of George W. Bush, and the stifling of public debate and protest along the way, and of the crookedness of the election results, which put into power the most self-interested administration and one less committed to genuine altruistic compassion than any other, elected by deceit and money, and the impotence of a voting public, that in large measure sees itself disenfranchised by corporate and party domination.