Plot
A documentary that examines the question, "If Barack Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?"

Release Year: 2012

Rating: 5/10 (2,529 voted)

Critic's Score: 44/100

Director: Dinesh D'Souza

Stars: Dinesh D'Souza, Barack Obama

Storyline
A documentary that examines the question, "If Barack Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?"

Cast:
Dinesh D'Souza - Himself
Barack Obama - Himself (archive footage)

Taglines: Love him or hate him, you don't know him.

Details

Official Website: Official Facebook | Official Twitter |

Release Date: 24 August 2012

Opening Weekend: $31,610 (USA) (15 July 2012) (1 Screen)

Gross: $2,028,035 (USA) (19 August 2012)

User Review

A Fair Review by Someone Who Actually Saw It

Rating:

Oh, where to begin? Hear me out as a non-partisan reviewer. Although labeled as a spoiler, I don't plan on giving a summary of the movie in a way that it would ruin it for you-- doubtful. Anyway, contrary to popular belief, this wasn't a "Republican propaganda film" or an anti-Obama "attack film", surprisingly. Before this film, I had not actually heard of Dinesh D'Souza; but I had seen movie reviews and heard a little more about him since its release. After seeing the preview for this documentary, I thought this film would be a complete joke and another one of those annoying, biased, full-of-distortions films. I was indeed wrong. Needless to say, I did not "pre-plan" my own personal review of the movie before even seeing it, like some people appeared to have done. The worse thing is reading these false reviews by people who clearly have not seen the documentary (usually those people who write a long paragraph with a run-on sentence). Otherwise, they'd be glad to mention that Bush and Fox News had been given some blame by an interviewee. Politicians and like-minded people were not interviewed by D'Souza, which is refreshing in a political film!

The movie starts out with the director (D'Souza) giving some background into the similar elements of his life and President Obama's, while providing insight on the roots of the President's life. (We are talking about actual facts.) D'Souza's background aside, he first began to talk about Obama Sr. and his voyage to the United States; eventually sharing the event in which President Obama's father and mother met. While doing so, he took the initiative in reaffirming the fact that President Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961-- again, facts here. D'Souza gave the history of Obama Sr. from the proper research he did, along with excerpts taken from Obama's "Dreams from My Father". The director began connecting Obama Sr. from place to place, family to family. A couple questions posed in the documentary were "how was President Obama so influenced by a father who he barely saw?" and "what were the things behind Obama's influences and beliefs?" (NOTE: this review is property of the writer and not the property of this site; by allowing this review to be submitted, you agree to disregard this site's copyright and conditions, as this has been published elsewhere by the same author; thank you for understanding) Call it whatever you want, but the director deemed it necessary to point out the book said "from my father", not "of my father"-- fair point, but not sure how worthy it is. The director left it there, so I believe he wanted the viewer to watch and think for themselves.

Surprisingly, the director seemed to make a decent amount of stops through Hawaii and Kenya. Much of the people he interviewed were either people who had written actual accounts on Obama, people with PhD's giving professional & fair analysis (except for the person toward the end, in my opinion), someone who is related to President Obama, or someone who knew Obama Jr. or the rest of his extended family. The most shocking one to me was not Obama Sr.'s friends, but President Obama's half-brother. THIS part I will not spoil! I have yet to actually see this part told in a professional critic's review and in its entirety. I actually read a review from someone in the NYT and they gave a false narrative regarding it, which is a shame.

Now onto the details of bias/distortions, fairness, and the ending (don't worry). My only two real problems with this documentary are as follows. While the director did not push a "go-to-war" agenda, like some proclaimed, he mentioned the "United States of Islam"-- something that was not properly backed up in the documentary with empirical evidence. This was also pushed by someone the director interviewed, I believe (as I said earlier in my review). There was also a part where the national debt was shown by graph. The interviewee gave fair blame to both President BUSH and President Obama for the added debt. In addition, the documentary pointed some fingers at the one and only FOX NEWS for over-hyping Reverend Wright's sermons (yes, he and other Obama friends are mentioned; along with the $150k bribe story). In the end, I was surprised not to see a "Republican battle cry", but then again, it was a documentary, not an "attack film".

I could go on but you get the gist.

You could really see the hard work, the effort, and the money put into this documentary in order to find the empirical facts. I honestly advise anyone to go see this film. It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative. This is a film about Obama, what may happen through the year 2016 if re-elected, and far beyond that which cannot be described. I fairly gave this documentary 8 (and a half) stars out of 10 and took off for a distortion and something that was more of an opinion than an objective statement, as previously detailed in my review. I can tell you that anyone who gives this film below 5 stars (which is pushing it) either did not see it or had the intentions of giving it under 5 stars before they even saw it. The same goes with people who cannot even write full paragraphs, resorting to choppy paragraphs.

Do not walk in and out of the film closed-minded (liberals!), thinking what you want to believe. Walk out of them film knowing, for the majority, the facts about Obama through 2016.

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