What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea

A well-intended but raggedy film-essay-masquerading-as-a-documentary, What America Needs finds filmmaker Mark Wojahn traveling an overland route from NYC's Ground Zero to the Halloween parade in San Francisco's Castro district, pausing along the way to ask 500 ordinary Americans a single question: “What do you think America needs?” It's an intriguing concept, given the current state of affairs, and Wojahn is able to find a very broad cross-section of articulate and friendly Americans from a wide variety of racial, ethnic, gender, age, and social spectrums. Many of the answers are blatantly political, with more than a few calls for regime change in the White House, while a few are in-the-ribs jokey (a Halloween prankster with blacked-out teeth calls for better dental care). Unfortunately, Wojahn's trans-American trek wears out its welcome almost before it leaves the East Coast: the film seems to have been shot on a consumer camcorder (the image is often so jittery it makes the average Dogme production look like a still life by comparison) and the sound levels pinball all over the place. But even without the audio-visual drawbacks, there is still the problem of a novelty stretched to the fraying point: what might have been delightful at a half-hour becomes overcooked at 93 minutes, and anyone expecting a profound payoff at the end will be seriously disappointed. Not recommended. Aud: P. (P. Hall)