Going in I knew that this was a fake documentary, set today, detailing the years since the South won the Civil War.
Sounds like a pretty good setup for a funny and/or interesting film. Unfortunately it's neither, and if you have half a brain it doesn't really present any sort of deep social message either. It's pretty much an underwhelming mess.
The big problems with the film are that it doesn't really feel like a documentary and that instead of coming up with a unique timeline, they pretty much rip off all the major events of the 20th century and just turn them around to fit the film. For instance, the Berlin Wall becomes the Canadian Wall, December 7th becomes the day we bomb the Japanese, Kennedy gets shot because he wants to free the slaves. It just feels like the filmmakers take the easy way out by relying on real events instead of really trying to create something from scratch.
Presented as a British Documentary airing on a San Fransisco television station, the movie starts off in rather absurd fashion detailing how an on the run, deposed President Lincoln is traveling with Harriet Tubman and gets captured by Southern Soldiers. Lincoln of course is in black face to try and hide. It just comes across as silly and sets a bad tone for the film right out of the blocks.
From there a rather silly and contrived re visioning of American history begins, the biggest problem of which is that it goes from silliness, all the Jews were relocated to Long Island for instance, to trying to be serious and deep. It fails both ways.
Another major issue is that the faux documentary only has 2 real speakers, a black lady and a white professor, both of course with an extreme point of view. Again, the easy way out.
A lot of times the movie loses it's way trying to be as extreme as possible, such as in the long segment where the CSA goes to war with all of South America in an attempt to enslave more people, the most ridiculous segment of which has a Latin man talking of being forced to eat ham hocks and pigs feet as a way to indoctrinate Mexicans. It just comes across as so very stupid.
Perhaps the best part of the film, which borders on being nearly funny, are the commercials spliced throughout the documentary. Since modern America still has slaves, almost all the commercials are blatantly racist. Electronic shackles to keep your boy from running, jigaboo motor oil and toothpaste, etc etc. Of course in the end the film beats us over the head with these ads by showing us that most of these products existed at one time, as if it's a revelation that America was and is a racist country, like the audience are children.
Anyway, we sympathize and encourage Hitler, all our great artists go to Canada, African leaders, even in the mid 1900's are still sending us slaves, and on and on.
Much of the film is centered around the fictional Fauntroy family, a made up Kennedyesque clan who are sort of CSA political royalty and there's a big sequence at the end that I guess is supposed to make the viewer react in some way but it's just so badly constructed and played out that I couldn't give a damn.
In summation, this is a film that is pretty much just a boring 90 minutes, made all the worse by the fact that it's such a marvelous premise being wasted minute by awkward and underwhelming minute.
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