In 2008 Seth MacFarlane released several embarrassingly inept animated shorts as a web series. These came with massive sponsorship deals. They remain some of the worst things internet video as a medium has to offer. MacFarlane’s so-called “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” were essentially the most gross-out skits he and his team could think of. He could go hog wild crafting the most potentially offensive lowbrow thing imaginable and still get massive exposure for it. So he did. Here is a sketch from the series. This clip is very NSFW It should give a good idea of what this series is like.
Now imagine someone took the spirit of that 75 second 2008 edgelord web animation. Pair it with a creative team and voice cast that would make animation fans in 2020 set up and take notice. Make the entire thing a pointless farse on the American Revelation Unfortunately, they are unable to escape the brand of 2008 moronic, edgy for the sake of its embarrassment that categorises Seth MacFarlane at his worst. Welcome to the hell that is America: The Motion Picture. A scathingly unfunny generally toe-curling embarrassment. The backbone here is a script entirely comprised of all the lowest common denominator sex, bodily function, race and genitalia jokes that 13-year-old bully you hated in school thought were the funniest thing since getting kicked in the balls. Who looked at this material and convinced Channing Tatum, Olivia Munn, Will Forte, Judy Greer and Simon Pegg among others to waste their time on these dregs of adult animation? Why are Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s producers on this? Two of the most fiercely creative people in the industry reduced to attaching themselves to this borderline painful embarrassment. Why do the films gory elements feel so unashamedly tacked on? All questions that are never sufficiently answered. This critic had to take a bathroom break roughly the 40-minute mark. Said break was definitively more entertaining than trudging back and restarting what is surely the worst film of the year. It’s not even close.
If America: The Motion Picture doesn’t run away with the dubious distinction of this viewers worst film of the year there will be something very wrong. A culmination of every off-colour schoolyard joke possible wrapped up in a stilted American revolution animated farce. All this built by a creative team who should know better. It’s not even that this kind of deliberately provocative humour can’t work on screen. Amazon’s TV adaptation of The Boys featured a scene in its sophomore season where a psychopathic superhero crushes a man’s head into a bloody pulp as he has sex with a literal superpowered Nazi. Yet it’s one of the best most multi-layered shows around right now. Highly recommended to anyone who has the stomach for it. Meanwhile America The Motion Picture should be permanently lost to time. That kind of thing that doesn’t deserve any views beyond pieces like this telling audiences to avoid them like the plague.
1/10
A Little Bit Of Everything 