Simply Perfect

A Masterpiece!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Indeed, FDR: American Badass is serving up a new deal of stupidity, here. Directed by Garrett Brawith, the movie is an over the top spoof that is trying to capitalize on the new trend of mixing historical characters with the horror genre that was made famous by author Seth Grahame-Smith. Seth Grahame-Smith is most famous for 2010's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter that was turn into a movie in 2012. Seeing that, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was being made into a movie, Screen Media Films & Common Thread went the Asylum Productions route in making a mockbuster. The film was apparent intention of piggy-backing on the publicity of that film with a similar concept. Instead, of having Abraham Lincoln fighting Vampires during the Civil War. This film has Franklin D. Roosevelt (Barry Bostwick) fighting werewolves during the events of World War 2. While, the movie, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter had a way bigger budget, I felt that FDR: American Badass was a better movie with a lower budget. The reason why, is that the movie didn't really take itself serious, like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Trying to make the movie seem like it really happen, just insult the intelligent of the viewers. Both movies are not historical accuracy, but having Abraham Lincoln save the slaves, due to vampires is an insult. That's more an insult, than having Axis of Powers being all werewolves. While, the movie has a lot of racism stereotypes of Germans, Italians and Japanese. It wasn't too extremely in bad stereotype taste, in my opinion. I did find humor in the idea of putting werewolves' blood in wine & beer. Then, everybody dissing sake. Another funny moment is the idea of Italy wanting to invade Ethiopia, which they did, in real life. I did find the accents by the foreign werewolves a bit annoying. The action scenes were so limited in budget. That, the fake looking CGI, awful make up, fake blood, and silly sets just add to the ridiculousness value to the film. At least, the movie didn't go into really dark humor with mentions of Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, or other tragic events. Another reason why people probably could see this movie is due to all the cripple jokes. If you can't stand cripples jokes. Just walk it off. The movie doesn't make FDR in shame of his disability. He embrace it, and makes it work in his favor. They make FDR, a stand-up guy! Barry Bostwick really does a good job as Franklin D. Roosevelt. While, he's looks more like Burgess Meredith's Penguin from the 1960's Batman series. He's a more convincing actor to portray FDR, than Bill Murray as FDR in 2012's Hyde Park on Hudson. Most of his set up jokes were pretty funny. Others were lame, like his legs. The supporting cast was pretty bad for the most part. I was really disappointment, because some of them are really good season actors. The crude language was mostly misses, as it felt out of place for the most part. The way, the actors deliver the lines felt like they were just reading off their lines. I guess, they just there to pick up their paycheck, and didn't put much into it. The only other character that was funny was Southern gentleman, Cleavon Buford (Ross Patterson). His character really remind me of Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday character in 1993's Tombstone mixed with Will Ferrell's Hot Tub Lovers skits from Saturday Night Live. I love the scene where he recalls the time, he fought against a werewolf. Another one is the scene, he jump out of an airplane. While, the sexualized jokes from him and his wife, were way too dumb. Just the way, he delivers it, is funny enough as he has no clue, what he's saying. One thing that was oddly place was the nudity. There is boobs fan-service for the male audience. Not much, for the women viewers to look forward to, as the women characters are just sex object here. Even Eleanor Roosevelt (Lin Shayne) was bitchy, and unlikeable. Honestly, they could had add more to her character than being whinny. I did find the potty humor, just unfunny and tasteless. I thought, at less, they could had cut those scenes. Another are the hip hop lingo radio fireside chat and dumb marijuana trip with Abraham Lincoln (Kevin Sorbo). I just couldn't get into. I did like the clever trust the American Eagle of Justice joke. Another thing that bugs me is the pacing. The movie really had a lot of padding scenes. They could really cut the whole helping Great Depression as its plays no factor in the film. Its takes forever to get to the World War 2 plot and they never resolve it with the ending. It was awful, how rush, the ending was. Overall: The movie is indeed, stupid and knows it. I wouldn't say, it's the best comedy ever, but if you just need a movie to be playing in the background, while you do something else. Check this out if you're on your last leg.

A fun idea, but the filmmakers behind it have no talent or intelligence whatsoever. This is a horror/sci-fi/action comedy about Franklin Roosevelt. In this movie's alternate history, FDR contracted polio from the bite of a Nazi werewolf. The Axis forces are all led by werewolves, and FDR, with his souped-up, machine-gun wheelchair goes to war himself against them. The concept is gold, but the screenwriter (Ross Patterson - he deserves to be called out by name) does little with it besides tell dick jokes and have old people swear and smoke weed (always comedy gold, right?). There's a good dose of racist jokes, too, with Werewolf Hirohito being unwatchably offensive (basically the only joke involving the Japanese is that they can't pronounce the letter "r"). Barry Bostwick is kind of amusing at times as FDR, but he's pretty much asked to carry the whole movie so he just mugs as much as possible. The only cast members who come out clean are Bruce McGill as FDR's head adviser and Ray Wise as Douglas MacArthur. Kevin Sorbo (who co-produced) shows up as the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. William Mapother, a character actor I've always liked (particularly from In the Bedroom and Lost), shows up for a while, too. This is painful.

Truth be told, then I wasn't really expecting much from this movie. I mean, look at the title, the concept and the plot. Was I surprised with what I saw, not, I can't honestly say that I was. I was mortified. This was unbelievably boring and anything but funny."FDR: American Badass!" tries to follow in the spoof footsteps of movies such as "The Naked Gun" and "Airplane!", however, it just failed on a monumental scale, and it was almost physically painful to witness.I will go as far as to say that the people hired for the various roles and characters were doing good enough jobs with what they had to work with - which wasn't much to begin with. And it was a losing uphill battle against a really horrible script and plot.For a comedy, then "FDR: American Badass!" was surprisingly devoid of anything that would even remotely get close to making you laugh. The jokes were bad and under the belt, and the humor found in the movie might not just be suitable for everyone. If you are easily offended, I would suggest viewer discretion here.This was also a losing uphill battle to just sit through the entire movie without losing interest in the screen, and I must admit that I gave up on this movie. It was just too much of a drag to get through. It took forever to get nowhere and spewing lots of pointless jokes and profanities at you while getting nowhere. As much as I enjoy comedy classics like "The Naked Gun" and "Airplane!", then "FDR: American Badass!" was like a really bad punch to the gut.I can't really recommend this movie, unless you are a hardcore fan of anyone on the cast list.

Nobody expected this movie to be high art. But it was enjoyable. There was the historical sacrilege and the jokes in bad taste and historical figures saying dirty words. But there was also real cleverness and, most importantly, a real love that shone through the film. Nobody involved was phoning it in. It seems like everyone involved in making this movie was having fun, and you couldn't help but have fun along with them. I had a friend over, we cued it up, and laughed quite a bit. And in a year, I will have forgotten about it.If you are offended by jokes involving racist / sexist stereotypes, you might want to give this one a miss.