I was particularly interested to watch this movie because of a review on letterboxed by

Seamus Malikov Zali, where he wrote,

Rob Reiner is a form of American liberal now entirely marginalized within the Democratic Party,

one that is obsessed with the sanctity of American institutions and the beauty of hard-hitting

American journalism, but simultaneously thinks George Bush's head should still very much be on a pike.

So that got me interested. The thought of Rob Reiner, you know, Mr. Biden, Mr. Democratic Party,

being reframed as a slightly eccentric figure in the modern Democratic cosmos, that got me kind of

interested. I mean, there's very little in this film,

which is rigorously conventional in every way. Very little to get excited about.

To call this movie formulaic, I think, would be an insult to trite, paid by the numbers,

genre flicks the world over. Like so much of it serves as just a scaffold for sanctimonious monologues and kind of fact

dumps of various kinds. Yeah, I think what's interesting about this movie, and really it is more,

it is more in absence than a presence. It's the fact that this movie could have been made in 2006.

It was frozen in amber.

And that extends to not just like the style of it, not just the cast of it.

But also the politics of it.

Oh, it's worldview.

All of the like talking points in this film, all of the moments that you're supposed to applaud,

all those moments where somebody says words to the effect

of, I just had to be a source for this story because I served in the military. And I was so angry

that these people who didn't even serve are using false information to send our boys over there.

Or, you know, there's a moment where maybe it's Woody Harrelson, maybe it's somebody

...