One big horrid administration

To be a satire you need to have a pointed goal and it doesn’t take long to realize that Buck Henry’s “First Family” has none. For as long as I live, i’ll never not be shocked at how badly some movies made by talented people become but this would-be political satire is atrocious, abominable, exhausting, and just plain confused about what, in fact, it even wants its joke to be. It has some terrific screen comedians of the day, in a film written by the writer “The Graduate” and creator of “Get Smart”. What could go wrong. Everything. This movie bumbles around like Joe Biden in a china shop.


Bob Newhart plays the President in this one and he’s so feckless in this that I now just realize I can’t even remember one single tediously quirky trait that separates him from the rest of the clowns in this movie. The rest are easy. Gilda Radner plays his sex-starved daughter, a comic bit that gets exceedingly more tiresome the more the movie has her molest every man in sight. The tipping point for her should have come when Henry calls upon her to have sex with an stone African fertility God with a giant penis- even for a tasteless gag this is flimsy, and it comes with no punchline. Madeline Kahn plays his constantly drunk wife, or considering how little the film gives her to do otherwise, maybe she was just playing out-of-it-on purpose. Bob Dishy is his dim-bulb vice president, a man-child who throws a fit in order to get a presidential pen. Harvey Korman is the United Nations representative who gets into a fight with a Saudi representative over who’s mother is a camel. And then there’s also Rip Torn, Fred Willard, and more. Pretty much every one of these people is playing a buffoon, which would be great if Henry were actually taking aim at idiotic leaders, but the problem is these people could be anyone or anything. They’re clowns and morons, but none of the jokes ever hit on any recognizable target involved with the sorry state of our politics.


What’s worse is that the film just lets these actors flail in a story that’s as loose, incoherent, and pointless as it is unfunny. It concerns us needing to secure natural resources from a fictional African nation given the stupid fictional name of Gorm, a sure sign that the movie plans on being offensive without offending anyone but those who have a modicum of intelligence. Take for example a scene where the Gorm leader throws one other Gorm member out of their plane mid-flight in a ritual of human sacrifice. Or the communication breakdown that comes up when the Gorm leader can only say a few English sentences from a phrasebook and it seems only a few Americans even know how to understand the Gorm language. In both cases, these desperation heaves that would barely power a comedy sketch, much less a subplot of any movie. Later when we realize another Gorm leader speaks and could have taught the other perfect English, it feels even flimsier.


There are moments later that could have spawned some good ideas- Gorm is doing great, but there’s just one thing they need to import to feel like America- a different ethnicity to feel superior to. Unfortunately, like the rest of this movie, Henry and his cast do next to nothing with it and so scenes just drag on and on. At times they seemingly even do improv to try to make something happen amidst the dirge of nothingness that the movie is aiming at. No use. This is one of the worst political satires ever made, a god awful movie, and perfectly in-line for impeachment.