Bad President (2021)

Nah. Nah, there isn't... There isn't actually make a movie about Trump and Stormy Daniels?... ?

Wow. I err... don't really know how to go about this to be honest with you! So Donnie Trump is in the news quite a bit lately because of his trial and what have you. So I guess that makes this movie relevant to current events? I don't know? What I can tell you is that I may have set a world record for fastest time deciding on a movie to watch as within seconds, as soon as I saw the thumbnail, I decided that this was my viewing entertainment for the evening. Bad President, the 2021 movie from *checks notes* Young N Free Films, appears to tell the story of how Donald Trump became President by making a deal with the Devil. And seems to lean heavily on it featuring Stormy Daniels. I don't think making my political leanings public are particularly that important for this blog, but what I will say is that I'm not American so not really in Camp Democrat or Camp Republican, but for a, mostly, decent human being and general average member of Western Society, I think Trump is a total bellend. I'll try not to let that opinion apply too much bias to the rest of this blog post though. And to be honest, going in, I genuinely think this is going to be an absolute bag of cheeseburger turds and it's that that drew me to this. More so than it being an opportunity to slag off Donald Trump.

At the beginning of the movie, Satan (Eddie Griffin) addresses his minions as they discuss their "recruiting problem." in essentially finding a new candidate to take over from where err... Adolf Hitler... left off. They ultimately decide, after considering the Kardashian sisters, that Donald Trump is their best new candidate. Meanwhile, Donald Trump (Jeff Rector) laments about his vastly accumulating debt and lack of success with the latest season of The Apprentice and decides the solution to his problems is to run for President, hoping to secure the Republican nomination (much to the amusement of his various wealthy American contacts), there is an amusing skit here where Don Jr (?) responds to the news with "over my dead body." and Donald replies with "that can be arranged." which frankly tickled me more than it should have. After observing his campaign in the first couple of days, Satan himself begins to have his doubts that even he can make this work, despite his minions trying to persuade him otherwise. Deciding to make his move, Satan under the pseudonym Luther goes to pay Mr. Trump a visit and after handily taking care of his security guard, is granted an audience with Donald where he offers his services to make Donald President, but Donald initially refuses believing he doesn't need any help. Luther leaves Donald with his "business card" before vanishing. As the situation for Donald worsens when he comes under increasing pressure to release his tax returns, and the Trump Foundation is exposed for funnelling charity donations into the business, Trump decides the answer to the problems is to go on national television and launch an anti-Mexican tirade! Which successfully results in the attention being diverted away from the Trump's corruption and (alleged) money laundering operations. Seeing this play out in real time, Satan begins to wonder if Trump even needs his help! Which is... a sentence I have just typed... but he is convinced to continue on by his minions. Deciding to make his move after the news breaks that Trump University was just a massive scam operation, Luther reappears in Donald's office. He again offers his services but in order to be convinced Donald asks him to make a lawsuit he is facing from a former decorator disappear. When Trump asks what the cost of it is going to be and if it's his soul, Luther refuses to answer, despite Donald protesting that he won't hand over his soul. After an upturn in fortunes, in the guise of aforementioned decorator being mowed down in a car accident and Trump topping the Republican nomination poll, Luther re-appears and convinces Trump to start a war of words against Senator John McCain, which he promptly does, causing fury and snatching headlines across the country. Deciding that he's taken it just a little bit too far, Luther pays Donald a visit again and reminds him that he - Satan - is calling the shots and tells Donald to calm down and stop acting like a lunatic. Trump decides he needs to address what he calls "the Muslim problem." and after giving an interview where he suggests every Muslim should be registered and tracked, he then proceeds to announce that there should be ban on Muslims entering the country until "we figure out what's going on." His actions catch the attention of Russian President; Vladimir Putin (Kevin Indo Copeland) who lends his support to the Trump campaign, with Satan's minions seemingly surprised that this somehow had nothing to do with him! That point notwithstanding though, Trump's appeal quickly begins to wane and Luther appears to announce that he obviously has zero chance of winning. He offers to ensure the vote swings in his favour in return for "solidifying their relationship" suggesting he wants Trump soul but Trump has none of it and refuses to make a deal. Which Luther reacts angrily to. Shortly afterwards, sexually and abusive comments that Trump made about women leak to the local press followed by accusations of sexual assault all but destroying his hopes of securing the nomination, with Trump seemingly feeling they are motivated by his rejection of Luther's help. Meanwhile in... well Hell I guess... Luther decides it's time to turn up the heat on ol' Donnie Trump and introduces a demon from his past... err figuratively speaking that is in the form of Stormy Daniels (Stormy Daniels... no really she plays herself!). Stormy makes the decision to go to a lawyer with her affair with Mr. Trump and how she is being pressured into signing a non-disclosure agreement which results in Trump paying her off to the tune of $130,000. Luther then decides to pay Vladimir Putin a visit, one of his close personal friends (!) and together the pair collude to threaten Donald with the most humiliating details possible about Trumps penchant for a err... golden shower... Deciding to finally cave in, after Luther's blackmail attempts, Donald goes to pay him a visit and in return for ensuring he is successfully elected, he agrees to "work" with Luther. In the closing scenes Trump celebrates his inauguration as, in Hell, Luther celebrates with the minions.

*Spoiler alert* but some of the events depicted above actually happened in real life! Crazy huh! So yeah, I thought this was going to be a sloppy pan of bum gravy going in, but I was surprised to discover it actually had some kind of cohesive narrative and some semblance of plot sewn through it! I mean it played out a bit like a 1 hour 30 TikTok parody spoof of the former US President but I'm prepared to recognise that some detailed planning and execution actually went into this to make it a bona fide attempt at being a comedy movie. I didn't think it was very funny, if I'm being completely honest, despite maybe getting a laugh out of me in spots, and I say that as pretty much the polar opposite of what might be considered a Trump supporter... but yeah I will concede that there was at least effort to make it a fully fleshed out, finished article of a movie.

The acting is... a little bit difficult to comment on really. Because everybody was, pretty much, playing over dramatized stereocast versions of the characters they were portraying: Trump, Putin, Rupert Murdoch, the Devil e.t.c. it's a little bit hard to sort of distinguish where they were genuinely trying to be parody characters or were just not very good at acting. Certainly some of the more muted portrayals; Anderson Cooper, Michael Cohen e.t.c came across as pretty vanilla and average. For what it's worth I thought Jeff Rector as Trump was alright. He was mostly convincing, seemed to be good at keeping up the act throughout the entire thing, and although it wasn't the most perfect or funniest portrayal in either direction, he did a decent enough job of playing the role. But he honestly did just look like somebody dressed up, pretending to be Donald Trump.

In terms of plot, I think the movie did a decent job of putting together a story in that it kind of built on the real world major milestones of Trump's candidacy with some (potentially) fictional backstage developments built around him and Satan's tough negotiations. And to be fair it did leave you guessing right up until the very end as to whether or not Donald would accept the help of the Dark Prince himself in order to sway the vote in his favour! For a "parody" I don't think it was quite cynical enough really and the humour is quite lighthearted. The movie chose to keep it mostly quite grounded and realistic save for a few spots and as a result it wasn't ever really laugh out loud funny. Which I think is where the movie really falls down to be honest. I think if it had been amped up to slightly more ridiculous levels it could have been a bit more amusing but I'm not really familiar with Param Gill's work so maybe this is his M.O?

Productionwise, despite being - I assume - fairly low budget, it was mostly all just fine. There was a few odd moments where I could tell it was clearly greenscreen or there was some video being superimposed on a scene post production but it was done to a fairly professional level so I'm prepared to overlook it. The soundtrack was fairly basic and it never really got too exciting, but it was adequate enough for what it was sitting in the background behind and the camera work was all pretty professional and well done save for a few odd scenes that seemed to have quite shakey filming and never settled on a fixed composition. But for the most part, it was fine, just obviously low budget.

Unfortunately though, I'm mostly coming away from this feeling that it just wasn't very good. The movie never really gets brutal or cynical enough that it plays to the vitriol and dislike that somebody who really doesn't like Trump might feel going into this. It isn't ruthless enough to satisfy that. Similarly it isn't funny and over the top enough to satisfy the Stoner movie kind of crowd, or clever and intelligent enough of a character assassination to cater to the pseudo intellectual crowd. It just kind of is really. It has a few mild gags, a Stormy Daniels cameo, and some loose semblance of an idea like; "hey, what if Trump actually had help from the Devil to secure that election win!?" upon which a parody style movie is kind of built but without any real satisfying pay off. I wouldn't say it paints Donald in a positive light, I don't think he would approve of it... but contrastingly I don't think it paints him in enough of a negative one to be that cynical of a parody. And as a result, I didn't really find it that funny or entertaining to be honest. But it wasn't unenjoyable with it. Meh? A weak 1 out of 5?