2016: Obama’s America

Directed by Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan

(PG)

**

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Think of this provocative film as “a sort of CliffsNotes” on the Republican case against Barack Obama, said Joe Leydon in Variety. Co-written and co-directed by Dinesh D’Souza, it “employs a brisk montage” of interviews and re-enactments as the pundit rehashes his theory that the president was shaped by radical mentors and would render America unrecognizable if re-elected. After a modest $6 million weekend, the film is already the highest-grossing political documentary of the past three years, and GOP partisans, at least, will be impressed by its “overall technical polish.” It in fact “starts out as a fairly informative recap of Obama’s personal history,” said Stephen Farber in The Hollywood Reporter. Only in the final half hour does D’Souza’s conjecturing “go off the rails.” His predictions of global war and American collapse are accompanied by “actual dark clouds and horror-movie music,” giving this section “the air of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel,” said Michael O’Sullivan in The Washington Post. It’ll please hard-core devotees while “boring everyone else.”