Synopsis
The film puts forth the notion that America's history is being replaced by another version in which plunder and exploitation are the defining characteristics. It also posits that the way the country understands the past will determine the future.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Dinesh D'SouzaSelf
- Barack ObamaSelf - US President (archive footage)
- Josh BonzieFrederick Douglass
- Rich BentzSaul Alinsky
- Grady Allen BishopCrew Member
- John KoopmanYoung George Washington
- Don TaylorAbraham Lincoln
- Michelle SwinkMary Todd Lincoln
- Janitta SwainMadame C. J. Walker
- Rett TerrellAlexis de Toqueville
Recommendations
- 40
Los Angeles Times
It's far more invested in elaborate historical reenactments, hypothetical dramatizations and special effects than interviews, research and data. - 38
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
What he’s doing, it turns out, is lowering the viewer’s standards of proof for a vigorous return to “2016″ territory, a hatchet job on Obama and Obamacare that tries to tie everything to a 1960s “radical” organizer who might have influenced the president. - 37
Washington Post
America is less successful as a debate, since it isn’t one. D’Souza controls the conversation, and thus goes unchallenged when he tries to make real-world points with make-believe scenarios. - 30
Variety
For the most part, however, D’Souza gives the impression of someone obsessed with whitewashing any and all dark chapters in U.S. history books. There are times when his defenses and rationalizations come across as almost laughably facile. - 30
The Hollywood Reporter
Here is one more dubious piece of agitprop that will delight the author’s fans and have very little impact on his opponents. - 30
Arizona Republic
Dinesh D'Souza's America: Imagine a World Without Her paints a genuinely troublesome portrait of the country — just not at all in the way he intends. - 25
RogerEbert.com
America is like the cinematic equivalent of one of those forwarded e-mails of mostly discredited "facts" that you receive from an uncle and at least those sometimes include family photos or a meat loaf recipe that can be of some value. - 0
TheWrap
It would be one thing if D'Souza had an idea, or any idea, he could stick to as a through-line in his project. But America isn't a documentary; it's more like the badly-filmed version of a badly-written, meandering op-ed piece from a paper that lacks fact-checking or proofreading.
