If you want to know who does most of the talking in “Al Franken: God Spoke,” pay close attention to who gets top billing in that title. The Almighty can hardly get a word in edgewise in this very peculiar documentary.
Franken doesn’t allow the knee-jerk predictability of his liberal pronouncements to deflate the great gasbag that he becomes as the movie proceeds. But for all his talk, it takes fully an hour and 15 minutes for him to finally get to the point: He’s running for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.
For something that has the look, structure and pedigree of a documentary – directors Nick Doob (“From Mao to Mozart”) and Chris Hegedus (“The War Room”) are former Oscar nominees for their documentaries – “God Spoke” begins with a bizarrely staged scene that looks like an outtake from a Mel Brooks movie. Franken is garbed and bearded in the role of Moses, carrying stone tablets and listening to the thundering voice of God. It’s actually Franken’s own voice, which is merely the start of the echo-chamber effect this movie produces.
He likes to hear himself talk, and nobody laughs harder or louder at Al Franken’s jokes than Al Franken. In one scene, he just lies on the floor and laughs, without amplification or explanation. Apparently he just thought of something funny.
A parade of red-meat conservatives passes before Franken’s owlish eyes – Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News attack whippet Sean Hannity – and Frankenmoses lays down the law to them, one by one. There is footage of the dustup with O’Reilly, during which O’Reilly repeatedly shrieks at Franken to “shut up!” He sounds like an enraged 5-year-old.
In case we don’t get it, Franken helpfully explains the new role in which he has cast himself.
“I take what they say and use it against them,” he says. “What I do is jujitsu. They say something ridiculous and I subject them to scorn and ridicule. That’s my job.”
The film is less like a documentary than a video diary, and a sloppy one at that. We see Franken entering the offices of the Boston Globe, but throughout a snarky exchange with someone inside the building, we’re never told whom he’s talking to or why Franken is there. Then it’s on to the next baffling encounter.
The film covers two years, and follows Franken through the 2004 presidential campaign. He and his Air America cohorts are certain on Election Day that they have helped bring about the defeat of George W. Bush, but then he wins. The camera zooms in on Franken’s face for about 15 seconds as he watches Bush’s acceptance speech on television, and he is transfigured.
The next shot is the announcement of Franken’s rebirth as a politician. “I’m thinking of running in 2008 against Norm Coleman,” he says coyly. But we already knew that.
|“Al Franken: God Spoke”
NOT RATED but contains profanity|1 hour, 30 minutes|POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY|Directed by Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus; starring appearances by Al Franken, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Henry Kissinger|Opens today at the Regency Theaters at Tamarac Square.
