The best thing about “Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People” is its title. The worst thing about “Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People” is the film itself.
In the course of less than eight minutes, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung creates a tinny satire on domestic and global politics that is neither amusing nor scathing. Hung heavily rips off the style of Terry Gilliam’s “Monty Python”-era animation, with its surreal mix of cut-out figures in absurd scenarios, but he lacks Gilliam’s misanthropic wit. Thus, we are treated to such tiresome cut-out offerings as Saddam Hussein as Rambo, George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler as eagles, Osama Bin Laden as a wiggling Christ in an Eastern Orthodox crucifixion motif, Yasir Arafat as Godzilla, Barack Obama as Borat, Rudy Giuliani as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Condoleeza Rice as a flying piece of excrement who soars into space and craps an atomic bomb on the Earth. With the sole exception of John Kerry waiving a Heinz Ketchup bottle, none of the sight gags are even vaguely humorous (and that Kerry joke is already four years old).
Throughout this mess, MC Paul Barman recites inane rhymes. With lines such as “old men against stem cells will use them themselves” or “‘This is Now’ with Bill Moyers, let’s kill all the lawyers,” this MC gives rap a bad name.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing if someone accidentally dropped this film in the Potomac.
