n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

In the near future, a planeload of immigrant orphans are on their way to a charity facility in Idaho when the Governor of the state closes its borders and refuses them entry. This sparks a division of military forces, between states government's National Guard and federal government's Army, each hell bent on protecting their own version of the American Dream, as well as their media images. At the center of this Constitutional storm is a President unable to make a decision without checking with his advisers and referencing one of his predecessors, a Governor more interested in liaisons with his immigrant news reporter mistress than dealing with immigration laws, a newsroom where facts and truth balance with viewer shares, and a TV audience more interested in their favorite daytime soap opera. The Great American Melting Pot is about to uncivilly boil over. This HBO black comedy is an excellent mix of political and news media parody, race relations satire, and morality tale. Wonderfully quirky, and sometimes deeply meaningful, dialogue. Characters run the gamut from dignified to loony. Performances from a large cast are all vibrant and spot on. A movie gem. Favorite Line(s): "Can't make an omelet without busting some sacred eggs. We're making history here and you ain't with us, are you?" "No I'm not." "You should be. Why not?" "Maybe because I'm a reporter, I ain't with anybody. Maybe because too many sacred eggs are getting busted. See, I rode the buses back in the 60s to bring people together. Pretty unfashionable now, isn't it?" "Your wife, she's Jewish, ain't she?" "You know, I forgot what she is, all I remember is that we met on the back of a bus." "I'm trying to remember the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. I said it a million times when I was a kid. Right now I can't seem to remember the words."

Though not a 100% spoof in the Airplane! league, this film is quite ridiculous in it's own way. It hits more targets than it misses, and it has some truly wonderful moments. By no means a 'must see' it is nonetheless a useful waste of time.

I noticed that a viewer thought this film was far better than WAG THE DOG. Might I disagree? This film is in many ways not on the same level as WTD. That film had acting, subtlety (despite its outrageousness), wit and brains. This film has neither. It's a stupid stupid (not to mention racist)thing that goes over-the-top too often. Way too often and waaaaaay over it. And it simply hasn't got the actors too for this sort of things. WAG THE DOG had De Niro and Hoffman (among others), this film's only virtues are James Coburn and Denis Leary (though the latter's part is seriously under-written, as are all parts actually). All of the others simply don't fit in. Perlman, Hedaya, Beau Bridges, Elizabeth Peña, ... none of them make sense in his/her part. And as far as the story goes... Well, if you're looking for subtlety, look somewhere else, because this one makes sure that you're not only not caring about the characters, but also that all of its attempts at black comedy or satire fall short(it had one good thing though, but I can't remember it)and that none of the events depicted seem believable. yes, it tries to give th e film a sense of reality by making the governor look like President Clinton, the president a dim-witted puppet and the head of News Net a sensationalistic b***ard, but all what it's trying to say sounds hollow and, yes, racist. See, for a film like this you need a careful handling of the subject. This film goes for cheap shots and smashes all of its messages without realizing it. A bad job for director Joe Dante, who really is more at home at the comedy-horror genre than at this political satire stuff. How to succeed in saying nothing at all. 4/10 (maximum)

If Joe Dante was Inferno's king, I'd like to go there… seriously, this guy is a dangerous terrorist who can't help destroying from the inside every convention, every cliché in the book, like some offspring of Tom Robbins and Roger Corman meeting on Rabelais' grave.(See what he did with "Small Soldiers" : an anti-militarist toys movie made to sell militarist toys !) Here he destroys everything that propaganda movies like "Top Gun" has been doing for a while - and, like our Italian friend up there judiciously pointed out, this one is too close to the bone to be taken just as comedy - it might better be described as "satire". This one wasn't theatrically released in France, unlike in Italy, but played on a film festival called "Les inédits d'Amérique"