The nation’s film critics found a new comedy, about a fascist president who demands loyalty oaths, to be “all too possible.” Apparently The Oath’s plausibility struck too close to home for some journalists. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan began by acknowledging the movie is a liberal fever dream: “Yes, lefties are this film’s target audience; if you’re not a compulsive consumer of Saturday Night Live’s cold open or Stephen Colbert’s monologue, this movie is not for you.”
The movie, written and directed by Ike Barinholtz, revolves around a family Thanksgiving that plays out as a “thin-skinned, conservative commander in chief” is compelling Americans to sign a loyalty oath. O’Sullivan explains that “the latter-day Gestapo” shows up at the characters door to interrogate liberals.
All this is too much for the Washington Post film critic, lamenting: “It feels all too possible. And the echoes of such real-world events as the anger that exploded in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s inauguration.”
With no real justification, O’Sullivan gets in a gratuitous reference to new Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh:
With the bruising battle over Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation still a fresh memory for many, those last two questions are likely to linger in the mind as lefty moviegoers settle in to enjoy The Oath, a blistering political satire that may rip the bandage and the scab, as well as a lot of the skin, off a political wound that has barely had time to heal.
While the Post found time to review this conspiratorial liberal film, there’s no critique of the new pro-life movie Gosnell.
CNN.com solomnly insisted that The Oath “compels the audience to confront [today’s headlines], albeit in fictionalized form.”
Entertainment Weekly found the movie — you guessed it — “entirely plausible.”
Set in an entirely too plausible alternate timeline of the United States, The Oath hinges on its titular policy – a Patriot’s Oath that the White House requests all American citizens sign to declare their loyalty.
If you’re sensing a pattern, Variety used the same language:
The Oath kicks off with the all-too-plausible premise that the White House is encouraging all Americans to sign a statement of loyalty to the president, then flashes forward to just days before the deadline.
It’s almost as if liberals in the media have the same paranoia.
