This was a horrible film. I do not mean to come right out and say that, but it honestly is the most jumbled mess of ideas, conspiracies, and logic to ever be called a documentary. When I watch these types of films, I expect them to be similar to a college thesis paper. I want to see a riveting introduction, a powerful THESIS statement followed by some strong supportive points to back up the thesis, and finally a gut-wrenching conclusion. I want to sit in my couch and be able to pick my jaw off the floor and be in awe of the brilliance of the reporting. That was not the case with The Hunting of the President. I don't even think that filmmakers Nickolas Perry and Harry Thomason knew what they were doing. They had this idea, they had the clips and interviews done, now all they had to do was put the film together
and they failed.
To begin, this film assumes (and you know what happens when you assume) that you know most of the facts about White Water and the Lewinsky trial. It assumes that you know the key players; that you were one of the thousands glued to your televisions during all of this public embarrassment. Strangely, it even assumes that you know the people behind the scenes. That you know most of the points already, this film just gives you a platform to watch them without commercials. This is way too much assuming for me. I did not keep up with the Clinton debacle that much because it was his personal business. I was more interested about what our leader had to say about issues like terrorism and foreign policy than worry about who he was sleeping with. If Hillary was willing to forgive him, then I think the American public should do the same. But I digress, I promised I wouldn't go too far into personal beliefs. Nonetheless, this film does a horrible job of bringing the facts out into the open, and the little facts that they do they do not go too deeply into detail because they (again) assume that we already know it. This was my first issue with this documentary.
My second issue was their choice of filler. Throughout this film there were snippets of films and filmed moments to help bring some humor and levity to the thesis. While some may consider this a bandwagon jump onto what Michael Moore tries to do in his film, I saw it as something my college Professor would have called 'fluff'. These directors were avoiding, or trying to make light of a very powerful subject. If they were serious about this film, they would have either chosen to use different clips or dropped them all together. They were annoying and a waste of time maybe it was symbolic for this film?
Next, was the time. This film ran just short of 90 minutes. That is not enough time to fully develop your points and make bold statements. Through some issues we were forced to run through to cover enough ground. I continually had to check my remote to make sure that it wasn't on fast forward. For a majority of this film, I felt as if I was running through a maze with some clippers. Whenever I came to a dead end in this maze, instead of backtracking and using logic to get me through the puzzle, I would just use the clippers to make my own path. That is exactly what this film did. When it got caught in a trap, it just clipped its way out and started a different path. Nothing was coherent, substantial, or knowledgeable in this film. I wanted meat, and all I got was soup.
There were only two points in this film that I found interesting. The first was everything that happened to Susan McDougal. It was sad and devastating to hear and see a woman who went through hell after doing nothing-wrong what so ever. This was one of the points that I thought the Republicans could not back out on. They wronged this woman, and owe her so much of her life.
The second point that was interesting to watch was when the media decided to release the impeachment trial on Clinton ironically on the same day as Clinton was to give a speech to the UN about well terrorism. I think that it is only now that we see that perhaps this man knew more about our future than our current President and wanted to be proactive instead of reactive.
Outside of these points, this was a pretty poor documentary even during this time when we, the film community, are being blasted by more and more political documentaries. It was obvious that they had plenty of money to spend on Morgan Freeman, I only wish they had budgeted more towards the basics of the film.
Overall, a waste of time.
Grade: * out of *****
To begin, this film assumes (and you know what happens when you assume) that you know most of the facts about White Water and the Lewinsky trial. It assumes that you know the key players; that you were one of the thousands glued to your televisions during all of this public embarrassment. Strangely, it even assumes that you know the people behind the scenes. That you know most of the points already, this film just gives you a platform to watch them without commercials. This is way too much assuming for me. I did not keep up with the Clinton debacle that much because it was his personal business. I was more interested about what our leader had to say about issues like terrorism and foreign policy than worry about who he was sleeping with. If Hillary was willing to forgive him, then I think the American public should do the same. But I digress, I promised I wouldn't go too far into personal beliefs. Nonetheless, this film does a horrible job of bringing the facts out into the open, and the little facts that they do they do not go too deeply into detail because they (again) assume that we already know it. This was my first issue with this documentary.
My second issue was their choice of filler. Throughout this film there were snippets of films and filmed moments to help bring some humor and levity to the thesis. While some may consider this a bandwagon jump onto what Michael Moore tries to do in his film, I saw it as something my college Professor would have called 'fluff'. These directors were avoiding, or trying to make light of a very powerful subject. If they were serious about this film, they would have either chosen to use different clips or dropped them all together. They were annoying and a waste of time maybe it was symbolic for this film?
Next, was the time. This film ran just short of 90 minutes. That is not enough time to fully develop your points and make bold statements. Through some issues we were forced to run through to cover enough ground. I continually had to check my remote to make sure that it wasn't on fast forward. For a majority of this film, I felt as if I was running through a maze with some clippers. Whenever I came to a dead end in this maze, instead of backtracking and using logic to get me through the puzzle, I would just use the clippers to make my own path. That is exactly what this film did. When it got caught in a trap, it just clipped its way out and started a different path. Nothing was coherent, substantial, or knowledgeable in this film. I wanted meat, and all I got was soup.
There were only two points in this film that I found interesting. The first was everything that happened to Susan McDougal. It was sad and devastating to hear and see a woman who went through hell after doing nothing-wrong what so ever. This was one of the points that I thought the Republicans could not back out on. They wronged this woman, and owe her so much of her life.
The second point that was interesting to watch was when the media decided to release the impeachment trial on Clinton ironically on the same day as Clinton was to give a speech to the UN about well terrorism. I think that it is only now that we see that perhaps this man knew more about our future than our current President and wanted to be proactive instead of reactive.
Outside of these points, this was a pretty poor documentary even during this time when we, the film community, are being blasted by more and more political documentaries. It was obvious that they had plenty of money to spend on Morgan Freeman, I only wish they had budgeted more towards the basics of the film.
Overall, a waste of time.
Grade: * out of *****