First of all, let me just say I can't stand Fox News. I think it's nothing but right-wing propaganda and a shameful excuse for journalism. I also think a documentary exposing Fox's hypocrisy is much needed, but this one is an extremely poor effort.
Frankly, I am SHOCKED at the amount of people rating this movie a 9 or 10. People, these ratings are supposed to be based on the QUALITY of the movie, not the ideas it stands for. And quality is one thing this movie lacks. For starters, the interviews are the worst I've ever seen. They are poorly lit, and consist of nothing but the same talking heads over and over again, which becomes really tiresome. The graphics and music are painfully cheesy. The sound quality is horrible, the dialogue is usually out of synch, and even the clips from Fox News look extremely poor, like they've been taken straight from the Internet. The entire movie looks and feels a high school film project at best, and (as another user pointed out) a Powerpoint presentation at worst. I understand it's on a low budget, but the fact that the director has a career going back decades makes the lack of style or creativity especially outrageous. You'd think in all that time he'd have learned a thing or two about, say, lighting a shot.
Technical stuff aside, even the movie's basic argument (Fox is biased and unfair in its reporting) is weak. I never thought the day would come when I'd be defending Fox News, but it has to be said that many of the clips are taken out of context or otherwise distorted. For example, most of the scenes of anchors spouting wild opinions are taken from Fox's political talk shows. Fox has NEVER claimed these shows are to be seen as news, but that's what the movie keeps implying. It's as unfair as anything Fox has ever reported.
An even better example of the blatant distortion is when they show Bill O'Reilly responding to criticism that he always tells his guests to "shut up." O'Reilly says this only happened once, and this is followed by a montage of him yelling "shut up!" at different times. Well, that's very clever, except that in almost all of these instances he's not actually talking to a guest. We even see the infamous moment where he yelled at Al Franken on a book tour, which had NOTHING to do with Fox News AT ALL. Do all these clips indicate that O'Reilly is an obnoxious moron? Sure. Does it indicate that he's lying about only telling a guest to shut up once? Nope. Just the opposite, in fact.
The movie has some good points to make, and occasionally does so effectively, but the overall distortion, low quality, lack of narration, and complete lack of a sense of humor bring this one down. I suspect that the people rating this so highly were either directly involved with the making of the movie, or are just flakes who will jump at the chance to support anything remotely anti-right. Ignore the hype; this is simply a bad movie. 4/10 stars.
Frankly, I am SHOCKED at the amount of people rating this movie a 9 or 10. People, these ratings are supposed to be based on the QUALITY of the movie, not the ideas it stands for. And quality is one thing this movie lacks. For starters, the interviews are the worst I've ever seen. They are poorly lit, and consist of nothing but the same talking heads over and over again, which becomes really tiresome. The graphics and music are painfully cheesy. The sound quality is horrible, the dialogue is usually out of synch, and even the clips from Fox News look extremely poor, like they've been taken straight from the Internet. The entire movie looks and feels a high school film project at best, and (as another user pointed out) a Powerpoint presentation at worst. I understand it's on a low budget, but the fact that the director has a career going back decades makes the lack of style or creativity especially outrageous. You'd think in all that time he'd have learned a thing or two about, say, lighting a shot.
Technical stuff aside, even the movie's basic argument (Fox is biased and unfair in its reporting) is weak. I never thought the day would come when I'd be defending Fox News, but it has to be said that many of the clips are taken out of context or otherwise distorted. For example, most of the scenes of anchors spouting wild opinions are taken from Fox's political talk shows. Fox has NEVER claimed these shows are to be seen as news, but that's what the movie keeps implying. It's as unfair as anything Fox has ever reported.
An even better example of the blatant distortion is when they show Bill O'Reilly responding to criticism that he always tells his guests to "shut up." O'Reilly says this only happened once, and this is followed by a montage of him yelling "shut up!" at different times. Well, that's very clever, except that in almost all of these instances he's not actually talking to a guest. We even see the infamous moment where he yelled at Al Franken on a book tour, which had NOTHING to do with Fox News AT ALL. Do all these clips indicate that O'Reilly is an obnoxious moron? Sure. Does it indicate that he's lying about only telling a guest to shut up once? Nope. Just the opposite, in fact.
The movie has some good points to make, and occasionally does so effectively, but the overall distortion, low quality, lack of narration, and complete lack of a sense of humor bring this one down. I suspect that the people rating this so highly were either directly involved with the making of the movie, or are just flakes who will jump at the chance to support anything remotely anti-right. Ignore the hype; this is simply a bad movie. 4/10 stars.