2016: Obama's America

Co-directed (along with John Sullivan) by conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza—and adapted from his book The Roots of Obama's Rage—this election-year propaganda documentary was a surprise theatrical hit, and could still appeal to those displeased with President Obama's re-election. But while technically well made, this is an essentially tawdry film in which D'Souza, who recently resigned his position as president of New York's King's College over a marital scandal, argues that Obama's worldview flows from the anti-colonial attitudes of the Kenyan father he barely knew and past associations with political and religious radicals. According to D'Souza, the president was able to conceal his beliefs in order to win election, but in the next four years can be expected to propose policies that would undermine the U.S. economy, endanger national security, and allow the rise of a unified zone of Islamic fundamentalism stretching across North Africa and the Middle East into South Asia. D'Souza bases much of his argument on tendentious interpretations of Obama's own autobiography, which he connects to his own immigrant experience, while also securing apparent agreement from a handful of “expert” interviewees (although his questions are clearly phrased to lead them to agree with his own conclusions). D'Souza even plays the victim, offering a montage of television clips criticizing his book, but gives himself away in one scene when he describes his anti-colonial psychobabble as another “card to play” when accusations that Obama is a Muslim or wasn't born in the United States haven't worked. Not recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)