Dana Carvey, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond and Keegan-Michael Key are among the stars discussing their takes on various occupants of the White House.
-based documentaries. But for all of its ostensible focus on a wide variety of comic impressions and impersonations of presidents, I’d estimate that at least 75 percent of the documentary’s 93-minute running time is dedicated to'Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story' Review: The Sex-Positive Queen of NYC Public Access Cable Takes a Royal Bow, Nude of CourseInside Chanel's Tribeca Festival Artists Dinner as Robert De Niro Honored Jane Rosenthal Playing POTUS: The Power of America’s ‘Acting Presidents’ is fine.
It’s missing some key interview subjects and dodges or entirely misses some key topics, but when you have talent as clever and enthusiastic as, it’s barely functional, to a degree of near pointlessness. The failure to analyze or even acknowledge countless comic interpretations of presidents in contexts that lack Lorne Michaels is so thoroughly bizarre that the entire documentary becomes more head-scratching than enlightening. Though like Neville’sis one of the strangest winners of the Grammy for album of the year.
It isn’t deep historical context, but it’s absolutely historical context, followed by a swift jog through the Smothers Brothers and…that’s pretty much it for comic presidential impersonations beforepresidents talking about their individual impressions, their origins and their causally unprovable impacts on the perception of those presidents.
This is the best part of the documentary, whether it’s Chevy Chase cackling at the possibility that he might have contributed to Gerald Ford’s speedy electoral defeat; Dana Carvey talking about how he was so stymied by George Bush that he cobbled together a character who often had nothing at all to do with its source; Alec Baldwin reading both negative tweets fromand, proudly, his own responses; or Kate McKinnon getting emotional still talking about her version of Hillary Clinton and Hillary’s 2016 defeat.
Greenbaum and his subjects are willing to acknowledge some of the less successful impressions over the years — “Of all the presidents who have ever been on, I think I was my least favorite” Will Forte says of following Will Ferrell as George Bush Junior — as well as the lengthy struggles to find an appropriate Obama or Joe Biden.
‘s impressions have achieved a level of hyper-reality, in which the heightened Xerox supplants the actual historical figure in the collective consciousness. In that light, though, it’s strange not to dedicate a single second to then-candidate Donald Trump’s appearance hosting Although the documentary suffers a little from the absence of Tina Fey as part of a lengthy segment on her Sarah Palin impression and its effect on the 2008 election, that probably should have made Greenbaum realize that not only was Palin never elected POTUS , she wasn’t elected veep either.also covers Maya Rudolph’s impression of Kamala Harris, who doesn’t technically align with the title.
Perhaps that all could have been 15 minutes redistributed into non-is great discussing the origins of Luther, Obama’s anger translator. Rich Little is present to discuss general impressions.
Seth Meyers is part of a decent segment on the history of presidential roasting at the White House Correspondents Dinner.is mentioned only nebulously, though full credit to Will Sasso, the only talking head in the documentary capable of expressing regret at how much and how wrongly Monica Lewinsky was lampooned in conjunction with Bill Clinton. There’s something astonishingly and instantly dated about how thoroughly Greenbaum misses the way new media has and continues to approach Donald Trump.
Sarah Cooper may have been a flash-in-the-pan, but if you can’t find something substantive to say about how a multi-racial woman became a fleeting sensation lip-synching Donald Trump, you’re not trying very hard. , wastes time on a voiceover device that’s too cutesy to be worth the effort and a three-act structure that’s more for the benefit of his editors than the audience. It all results in a potentially meaningful documentary that isn’t bad, just lacking.
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