Am I Racist? (2024) [Movie review]

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Am I Racist? continues the long line of Right-wing movies loudly declaring that they are just beginning a dialogue with no one else in the Wendy’s drive-thru of life. Cultural figure Matt Walsh has returned to film by asking America and the world to examine the merits of DEI. If you don’t know what DEI is, leave FOX News on at the local Pep Boys and let the local elders give you their take on it. For people with little time to waste, let’s get to the point. DEI aka Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is an academic measure that has now been given that glow-up of becoming corporate and government policy

Am I Racist or Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Am I Racist answers that question your crazy Aunt or older relative keeps screaming at the TV. Why isn’t anyone doing something about DEI? They send out Facebook chain letters or forward misframed graphics to argue their point, but let’s kick things up a notch. Daily Wire contributor Matt Walsh decided to make another documentary attacking the need for DEI. How did he do it? He slapped on a “fake” beard that wouldn’t have been out of place in a John Holmes movie and satirizing DEI.

Most defenders of Am I Racist claim how isn’t that different than Borat or any other hidden camera narrative of recent popularity. For those younger readers, Borat was a hit Oscar nominated film based on a character from an HBO series. The film came out 18 years ago, but still remains quite fresh in the minds of those you claim to have no Rizz.

But, it is different because those movies were helmed by sitcom veterans that were still following a traditional narrative. Am I Racist? feels like five ideas that fight it out and never really have a chance to make a point. Although, there are funny moments throughout Am I Racist. They just don’t ever feel earned.

Matt Walsh isn’t Borat

Just because you slap on a disguise, it doesn’t turn you into an investigative reporter or subversive comedy figure. In fact, if the people being interviewed by you can tell you’re a fake, it creates a false dichotomy to elicit negative or compromised responses. After talking to a Daily Wire fan while writing this, he informed that the beard isn’t a fake. Not sure what to chalk the look up to, but it doesn’t seem to match his face.

But, that’s part of the issue here. It’s why the Uncanny Valley and certain reactions to AI imagery are everywhere. A comedy requires a funny figure to hold focus, but a documentary requires a clear narrative and a chance to make an argument to its audience. When you blend them together, things get weird. You can’t own the libs and convince others to join your side. What you end up doing is leading to a point of provocation.

Provoking people promotes further tribalism and you can get early success, then the shelf life drops off. What’s funny is that the Left had a documentarian who did this for years. Eventually, he stopped as the Weinstein Company stopped distributing his docs and America discovered TikTok and COVID.

Side note: I really thought it was a fake beard until rather recently. No idea why the facial hair visual read so fake to me. But, there is a lot to unpack there.

It’s been 20 years since Fahrenheit 9/11

Matt Walsh isn’t Borat, but he’s doing a pretty damn good Michael Moore impression. Michael Moore could have easily made Am I Racist. In a way, he’s made it a few times already. Populist entertainment within documentary trappings that never really probes an issue puts it in terms that anyone can understand. Your mileage with the material depends on your background, but it’s cut from the same cloth.

Populist documentaries have been around for a hot minute. What Am I Racist does right is it positions its central tenet out for the world to see. However, I don’t believe that Matt Walsh was the best guy to present the material. Divorced from his background and examining Am I Racist on its own merits, the narrative is flawed.

It’s flawed because it starts with the belief that you accept a world where Matt Walsh’s take on things is an absolute truth. For more than half of America, it’s not. They might agree with some aspects of his approach, the end result either goes over their head or alienates them. I can already feel the people who have or haven’t seen Am I Racist clamoring for the sides, but that’s the problem.

America right now is like living between two terrible neighbors

For the majority of America, things are pretty well defined. There is never enough money, good jobs, purpose, housing, good schools, etc. Everyone claims the other group is limiting their options, while also boot-licking the rich men and businesses that dominate their lives. Just this past week, I had people who barely got out of High School launching mini-parades over Mark Cuban’s efforts to explore buying X.

These are the same people who angrily turned off The Big Short once they got past the Florida strippers because it got too hard. But in the last few years, they have become so radicalized that policy and statements are enough to send them into months long tirades. CRT and DEI aren’t exactly new concepts, it’s just that no one gave that much of a care about them until they were told to start performing up to them.

Not everyone gets the memo in the same way at the same time. So, when people respond to it differently…you get most of the humor of Am I Racist. People legitimately don’t know what racism is in 2024. You can’t even say it’s the same throughout America because you’ll have mid-level salarymen in California and Massachusetts telling people in Nashville and Orlando how wrong they are in their daily lives.

The Conspiracy of The Thumb on The Scale

I try to avoid talking about that popular fruit related aggregate site as much as possible. Much like how certain comedians have a problem with Comedy Awards, I have an inherent issue with trying to distill criticism to a grading system of any sort. When you talked about film, TV or any creative endeavor…grading it like a 10 year old’s math quiz feels dumb.

Also, I will satiate some of the rumor mill surrounding how these things get reviewed. Nobody pays for coverage from press outlets. Although, there are many studios that will not hesitate for a moment to grease the palms of your mid to large scale Instagram and TikTok influencer. Hell, I just saw rates for Snapchat buy-in on a rather large upcoming arthouse film.

But, there are also secret chats, Discords, Slack channels, shared Google docs, Zoom calls, call-in lines that are all about coordinating coverage and what gets into the canon and who gets into the coverage pool. I’ve watched conventional press sites 5+ years ago put out statements about how they don’t compile these semi blacklists from an actual Slack channel where they were pushing in and out allowed content.

I do applaud Matt Walsh for calling out the behavior surrounding the coverage of Am I Racist, but he’s not the first one on either side of the aisle to take notice. That being said, when you mix the academic (nerds) into a position of perceived power and let them have a whiff of the zeitgeist, they will attempt to influence public perception. But, if you want to know how effective that is…ask your kids or parents to name anyone trying to be a kingmaker in film review.

Something something….Groucho Marx

Most of the American political zeitgeist isn’t that different than your repressed memories of High School. Everyone has tribes, teams, Burger King kids’ club members and other assorted groups. But, both sides have gone out of their way to alienate people to the point that it took a sharp uptick in fascism and antisemitism in America to get the average person to start taking things seriously again.

The majority of people that will go to see Am I Racist aren’t on that screen. They’re not a Matt Walsh or a DEI expert or a leftist talking head. Hell, they’re not even super right at all. Most Americans are painfully centrist with certain issues that trigger them one way or another. Many who will see Am I Racist still don’t know what DEI is or have an understanding after the movie. They just know it gets people mad and people seem even madder at them for not getting it.

Am I Racist features a narrative contrivance with an Uncle Frank who the “Matt Walsh” character has to come to an understanding with during Am I Racist. By the time it ends, “Matt Walsh” better understands Uncle Frank and tries to make peace. But, it’s a dramatization and it’s handled with the same panache as you would hear in any political spiel.

I know a guy and that guy made me rethink my stance on apple picking. When I met back with him and his local Teamster brethren, they had change my mind about XYZ. Meanwhile, a lone voice in the crowd speaks up saying “didn’t you spend the last year making fun of them”. Am I Racist is a lot like that. It knows where to get its laugh, it’s not interested in playing fair, but it also feels the need to pad its backend with a way to make its approach seem balanced. The narrative split is odd.

I’ve seen what makes you cheer…your hate fuels me

Make no mistake, I’m not a fan of either side. But, I’m also not a fan of fascism in whatever form it takes. Halfway through Am I Racist, I was severely annoyed by the movie. Mainly because it kept feeling like a bunch of people near my age range trying to put on a song and dance show for Boomer Daddies everywhere. The grandstanding to show that DEI is bad and how all of the related trappings make society worse felt forced at times. But, then something changed.

For those that have read the site for awhile, I went and watched Am I Racist with the same older crew that I met a year or so ago during my repeat visits to see Sound of Freedom. After all with Sound of Freedom, if you pay my way to go see it, I’m going to watch the movie. In full disclosure, I paid to see Am I Racist. I’m a little shocked to see how much ticket prices have increased, but at the same time it felt like a donation to save the cinemas that I love.

After I got my typical popcorn and Cherry Coke as I do at every screening, I was stopped by a group of four younger people yelling at the poster outside of the theater doors. One had a phone out, so I assume they were doing something for the ‘gram. But they were almost putting on a show about how much they hated the movie. Meanwhile, the older people and I that were going into Am I Racist were waiting for them to finish and get out of the way.

I never saw those kids again, but damn if they didn’t stink eye me for going to see a movie they’ll never see. A part of me wanted to say Hey, it’s just a documentary. But even I know that if you dig yourself in to defend a choice, you’re going to spend the rest of your life defending choices. Live your life and do your best.

To follow up on the People Who Put Their Thumb on the Scale

You can’t cover everything. Especially when your existence is dependent on waning venture capital in an era where most have all but foregone reading in favor of video and high impact social drops. That being said, when a large group of people keep excluding your output…it’s for one of two reasons.

The first being that your creative output is seen as less than the sum of whatever the majors and mids and minors are doing at the moment. We can’t cover an indie doc on subject matter we don’t like because there is no budget or time for it. That’s fair. Publishing wings are struggling more and more. Plus, they lack the actual reach of indie outlets who are more interested in producing content. But, the traditional sites also give your work a bit of perceived credibility. It’s a balancing act.

The other being you are right and there is a secret cabal of people trying to keep the message of Am I Racist from being seen by the masses. Now, this is the easiest to lambast and destroy because outside of a sect of Q-affiliated citizens, conspiratorial thinking doesn’t catch on like it used to do in past years. Now, you have people emulating stupid crap they see from our dear comrades at TikTok. Very few people that matter are ever actively out to get you, but they won’t hesitate to stop others from being able to see you.

So, either you worry about both aspects or you just sit out to make the best movie that you can. Am I Racist accomplishes that to a degree. But, there is something that is still ticking in my brain.

Where traditional readers finally get what they want out of an Am I Racist review

Am I Racist begins with a forced mockumentary style setup of “Matt Walsh” stating his problem with DEI and deciding to mock it. Fair enough. Once he gets his DEI Expert Credentials, he sets out to meet people interested in DEI and begins taking a few pages from Steven Crowder by engaging the masses in an effort to change their minds rather than his own. He gets a few bites here and there. It’s all played for laughs.

It’s in the build-up to the Do The Work workshop that Am I Racist is either going to keep you as an audience member or lose you. So much of that set piece is designed around the filmmaker and the audience both agreeing that DEI is dumb, the people running it are dumber and it’s a big a-do about nothing.

What it doesn’t consider is what about the audience that is split down the middle or entirely against your premise? Hell, what about the mouth breathing horde that still can’t figure out what the hell DEI is an hour into Am I Racist? There’s no concern for that. Unless you’re The New Yorker, most comedy is predicated on some easy softballs lobbed up the middle to make room for the real pointed humor to sell what you already warmed an audience up to receiving.

If you’re a fan of The Daily Wire or related material, you’re probably on your way to another Am I Racist showing. For those against it, you’ve probably added me to another block list for this piece. But, what I’m concerned about are those people right in the middle. Does Am I Racist prove its scorn for DEI and its practitioners?

Ultimately, No. And for those that want to defend Am I Racist from any criticism, I’ll say this. If the narrative itself was strong enough to stand on its captured footage to make its point, then there was absolutely no need for the Uncle Frank segment. Having a dramatization to provide a narrative capper vs. letting the footage speak for itself is why in no shape or form that Am I Racist is anywhere near the same league as Borat. But, that doesn’t make Am I Racist a bad movie…at all.

Kevin Smith recently said

Kevin Smith was on Theo Von’s podcast rather recently to promote “The 4:30 Movie”. Once you got past the hour marker, he started talking a ton about being a theater owner and his desire just to get people into seats. Honestly, it was refreshing and for movie fans and well-wishers that don’t understand the business side of things, it was long overdue hearing a major talent talk about the issue.

If Am I Racist helps get people into theaters, so be it. That doesn’t make it a well-made documentary, but these bullshit tastemaking attitudes about what is acceptable and non-acceptable are getting old. A few years ago, I was privy to be in the room with a lot of your coastal big-wig writers (some who don’t write anymore) and the sheer anger they had about COVID killing the exclusivity of their screenings and expanding the reach of limited windows to Middle America was unnerving.

So much of their power in days of old and what they’re attempting to do now comes from having access to materials that the gentry can’t see. If they say Am I Racist is garbage, but you can’t see the movie in your hometown, they set the narrative. Now, pull that back and think about all of the titles from major releases to arthouse to anything else where you have this inconsequential layer of people you will never encounter in your life getting to help dictate what you experience and what you don’t.

Meanwhile, your local cineplex is hanging on for their lives because they’ll stick an awful Crow revamp in two to three screens, but so many distributors can’t lose the money on gambling whether or not people will know Mid-Range Film X is opening this Friday. There is a reason why all you have anymore are superhero movies and kid-oriented cartoons. They are the only things you can safely sell to American cinemas.

The state of American theatrical exhibition in late 2024

I hate to borrow more clips, but see above. Your typical cinema in America isn’t dying. Hell, death is quick and pushes you onto the next step of your business evolution. The local cineplex is in purgatory waiting for death to put it out on its ass. But, every once in awhile you can an MCU movie or CG animation fare that does well enough to buy you another 4-6 months until you have to pray at the altar of corporate slop again.

In that sense, I welcome Am I Racist because at least it is adults trying to do something different. But, I also acknowledge that Am I Racist isn’t the best vehicle to do this. Why? Well as talked about loosely above, you can’t have a good faith argument when you come in with an agenda. It doesn’t mean you can’t get people to act stupid on camera and have a laugh. Oh, that’s easy.

But, there is a difference between squaring up one on one with a person you don’t like and making them defend themselves vs. disguising yourself to seemingly buddy up to them. Again, a lot of these approaches don’t feel earned or they feel like the staples of a local news investigative report from the 90s.

If people want to pay for it and make it a hit, go for it. Am I Racist seems to be a winner on the theatrical circuit and more power to them. The Daily Wire fans that visit the site told me they’re doing Snow White next and I was curious to see how that turned out. But, much like the basketball movie they did last year that a few of the steadfast conservative readers had me watch, it left me like this.

I don’t fundamentally agree with how they made it, what they were trying to do or their overall approach. But, it was entertaining enough to stand out as a fun oddity in a year where there has been more odd than fun.

Last words before they start calling me a Right Winger or worse again

I’ve interviewed and reviewed a ton of stuff here. Hell, there’s more in the AndersonVision archives that I had to squirrel away while I continue to revamp the site. That being said, I’m reminded of something that someone told me anonymously after I interviewed Dr. Andrew Wakefield upon seeing his documentary. It was along the lines of “your voice gives validity to these wackos and you should be ashamed for even talking to him”. The same person who sent this was a first time visitor, who when pressed to find out how he found the site, it was sent as a growing eventual blockchain to attack.

So, someone who had never heard or seen the site before or me was ordered by a group of like-minded individuals to attack somebody for a perceived slight. Especially when the interview itself was about the film and trying to get to understand what made the subject the way he was. I don’t share his beliefs and I’m not a fan of how he came to prominence, but I wanted to know how he ended up in the position that he found himself.

Why? Because that’s what you are supposed to do when meeting new people or encountering new material. You investigate it, approach it from your own bias and then take a step back to examine its construction. Am I Racist doesn’t work perfectly as a documentary for me, but I can see why some like it.

Am I Racist is in theaters now because you can’t put Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice on 10 screens in the same theater

Am I Racist was good?

Adult subject matter is back on the menu

It at least tried to talk about DEI

What I didn't like

The movie felt sloppy too much

As well made as the Uncle Frank stuff was, it continues to undermine the film and its efforts

66

Buy your tickets here

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