I thought it was really fun. Bits and pieces of it didn't work and I felt that at times it got a bit confusing and/or predictable, but overall it was a solid political satire with great performances. John Cusack shines as always, Hilary Duff delivers what is easily her best performance to date, Joan Cusack is hilarious and Marisa Tomei is charming. Several scenes had me laughing out loud and the running time seemed to fly by. I'd definitely recommend it. B+

just not a good film. John Cusack and Duff were really the only good parts. The last 15 minutes had some good laughs but most of it was just ridiculous.

D+

Loud, brash, blunt, and decidedly unfunny. Basically everything you want in a satire.

It's like they took the characters from Grosse Pointe Blank and dropped them into Lord of War, and then sprinkled some American Dreamz and Idiocracy on top of that. As if it wasn't brazenly atonal enough.

For some reason, Ben Kingsley is channeling Kenneth Branagh from Wild Wild West. This guy has an Oscar.

The only worthwhile part is Hillary Duff masturbating with a scorpion, and even that's for reasons outside of the film itself.

Fail, fail, fail.

I thought I warned you about this Dan!

I think the worst part of this disaster is when the twist involving Cusack and Duff is revealed.

I don't remember you warning me...? Even if you did, I probably wrote it off as another of your drunken ramblings.

The twist itself is disastrous (and disgusting), but also telegraphed from a mile away. I knew it as soon as Cusack started talking about his kidnapped daughter.

Anyways, I shall listen to you more often from now on!

When one of your characters is called Ook-Mi-Fay, you know you're not watching a smart movie. Or a smart satire for that matter. Ook-Mi-Fay is funny in an Austin Powers movie. It's not funny in what is presented as a smart movie made by smart people.

As trix said, it's tremendously blunt in its efforts to get the points across. In what should be subtle, clever humor, it's loud, in your face and about as subtle as an elephant in a swimming pool. It's abysmal in so many spots. And blame can't be placed on any of the actors: they seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously, as though this was going to be widely regarded as anywhere near good.

And each and every actor has some level of talent. In fact, Hilary Duff, as Yonica Babyyeah (whatever), is the only watchable part of the movie. Okay, she's not Meryl Streep, she's good to look at. But that aside, she's not the most appalling of the teen-to-25 actresses that have invaded Hollywood in recent years. Even if she sucked here, she would be forgiven for having the least credentials. We have two Cusacks (one of them an Academy Award nominee), two Academy Award winners (Tomei and Kingsley) and an Academy Award nominee (Aykroyd).

When in the first ten minutes you have Aykroyd as the vice president talking to John Cusack through a camera while sitting on the toilet and making a comment about his own shit, you lose me immediately. It reminds me of the scene where a crazed fan tries to get closer to Yonica, only to have one of her bodyguards beat the shit out of him with a bat, to which John Cusack exclaims "Jesus Christ!" That's my reaction to scene-after-scene of this movie. The only scene to register any laugh from me is after Yonica showers her wedding with gunfire, just as everyone's getting the hell out of there, Joan Cusack says "Isn't there any cake, even?" But she's relatively bad in every other scene.

A waste of talent, from start to finish.

*/****