America: The Motion Picture Parent Guide

When Abraham Lincoln (Will Forte) is slaughtered by traitor and werewolf Benedict Arnold (Andy Samberg), his best friend George Washington (Channing Tatum) swears revenge. But since Arnold also slaughtered the entire Continental Congress, Washington is going to need to find new allies if he wants to stop Arnold and King James (Simon Pegg) from destroying America. To that end, he rounds up frat boy Samuel Adams (Jason Mantzoukas), witch/scientist Thomas Edison (Olivia Munn), the world’s fastest racist Paul Revere (Bobby Moynihan), and fabled warrior Geronimo (Raoul Max Trujillo). The King’s plans are moving quickly, and the revolutionaries are going to be hard pressed to stop him from sucking the fun and freedom out of the continent.

For my sins, I minored in history in university. Unfortunately, I think merely typing this synopsis effectively voided my degree. It also gave me a wicked migraine. This movie is stupid. And it’s not just the gleeful disregard for history that makes me say that. It’s literally everything else about this movie.

Now, I find that with comedies, it helps to be funny. I’ve also found that most comedies are, how should I put this…terrible at being funny. This one falls into the category of “films that mistake being loud, obnoxious, and constantly referential for being amusing”. I guess if the idea of a frat party in a museum tickles your twisted fancy, this animated disaster will probably have you in stitches. For my part, the only stitches I got were to reattach my skull when I tried to remove my frontal lobe – in my defense, I made the mistake of looking at the clock and realized I still had an hour of this movie left. Brain removal felt like a good decision.

You may be thinking: “This sounds perfect for teenagers then! They love the unutterably stupid!” Broadly speaking, you would be correct. Unfortunately, this film is grotesquely unsuitable for younger audiences, owing largely to the 80 f-bombs sprinkled through the runtime. There are also a lot of crude sexual references, as well as brief nudity, sex, and a scene in a strip club. If you’re willing to look past that, though, then I suppose you should feel free to subject yourself to the cinematic equivalent of doing a keg stand in someone’s front yard. If you don’t see why that’s a bad idea, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I have better things to do. Like trying to figure out how to instantly delete this film from my memory and restore my mental equilibrium.