I'm not 100% sure this film deserves a 9. It assuredly does not deserve the 6.2 it's currently got at IMDB, but Al Franken is a polarizing subject, even though I do not believe he himself tries to polarize people. Yeah, okay. He was planning to spend 3 November gloating on his show. However, I think that in no
small part has to do with the crap he's taken from the right-wing media over the years. Further, yes. He's called a lot of right-wingers liars. However, he can back all that up with the facts; either they're liars, or they're incredibly ignorant of real facts and don't bother looking them up. (In the movie, for example, he conclusively shows, using US government statistics, that Rush Limbaugh's full of crap when he claims that 75% of people on minimum wage are teenagers working their first jobs; the real figure is that some 60% of people of people on minimum wage are 20 or over.) Also, he was awfully funny on SNL, back when SNL was still funny.
Basically, we're following Al Franken around as he tries to understand US politics from a perspective other than his own and gets harassed by Bill O' Reilly and Ann Coulter--who has a lot of nerve calling anyone else divisive and mean. (No, it's okay; a lot of conservatives don't like her either. Because, you know, she's a hideous, cruel shrew.) Also, we get him hyping his book and considering his Senate run; we see him on his now-defunct radio show. We see old SNL skits--showing, for example, the great wit of Al Gore, who is indeed funnier than people give him credit for.
Ann Coulter gets snippy at one point (yeah, shocking, I know!) about Al Franken's reference to his USO tours, but the fact is, he has done them. Apparently, the troops love him. He is also more than happy to tell you where he gets his figures and his assertions. You may not agree with his politics, and I'm not telling you that you should (I think you should, of course; I'd be a liar if I said otherwise), but you should at least be able to acknowledge that much. I'm not even telling you to buy his books and fact-check. Hell, you don't even have to check his books out of your local library; you can just sit there, pick a half-dozen statements of fact (these are distinct from, for example, jokes about Rush Limabaugh's weight), and look 'em up yourself. Then do that with the other side--Hannity, O'Reilly, or especially Limbaugh. See who the accurate one is.
But leaving all that aside, this is a man. Ignore, for a moment, that he's Al Franken, liberal icon. We see his deep affection for his wife, for example--the lovely and supportive Franni Bryson, who I think made the right decision in not becoming Franni Franken. We see his genuine commitment to his beliefs, such that he is nearly crying at the end of the 2004 election. We see him grieve the loss of his friend, Paul Wellstone, and what that loss makes him do. And, yeah, we see him get picked on a lot. We even see him lose his temper once or twice, as this is not intended to be a hagiography. Al Franken is not a saint, and this film is not trying to show that he is. We do see some of his petty side and the places where he is, let's face it, unreasonable.
Actually, I was thinking for some time about giving this movie an 8, because it is pretty light; it's not really a great documentary, though I think it is a pretty good one. But there are a few moments that really struck me. There's the girl who gets hauled out of the Republican National Convention, admittedly fairly, for demanding answers of the administration. There's Franken's clear grief on that cold November night. There's Franni. We don't know much about Franni, really, except what her husband tells us--and that may well be as much jokes as truth; who can say but the Frankens? However, I think we get closer to the real Franni here than we do in Al's books. I like her.
Al Franken genuinely likes a lot of Republicans. And certainly, while he's written books calling certain Republicans liars, he's never written a book calling all Republicans traitors. Will he win his Senatorial campaign? I, as it is obvious, quite hope so. A lot of other people don't. But I think Al Franken will be reviled on Fox News (whose suit against Franken was notoriously laughed out of court) either way, and it's up to the people of Minnesota to decide whether he'd be beneficial to them or not.
February 7, 2008
Top Critic
