Americathon

Many years, Michael and I watched a movie that seemed ludicrous at the time Americathon. America is bankrupt! Well this morning, the United States is planning to ask the IMF for help and many countries in the EU are in the same position. For goodness sake, these countries are the IMF; not the third world countries that they are meant to help. In the movie, the United States needs $400 billion, a sum that seemed beyond comprehension in 1979, now that is less than the recent bailout which is not working.

If George Bush wanted to go down in history, he has his wish. He will be remembered in the same breath as Hoover and probably because his understanding of the gravity of what has happened and what needs to be done is parallel. The situation has too many similarities to be comfortable.

If you find a copy of Americathon watch it. We might be watching this reality show soon and trying to find a way out.

All of this is established amusingly but all too quickly, before "Americathon," which opens today at the Paramount and other theaters, moves on to the soggier business at hand. To keep the country from going broke, the President decides to stage a 30-day telethon with a $400 billion goal. If this isn't the world's greatest idea, at least it's better than anything his First Lady — or his Old Lady, as he likes to call her — has been able to come up with. Her plan was to throw a big dance and charge everybody a $5 admission fee.
Once the telethon — hosted by Harvey Korman, who plays the transvestite star of some very successful sitcom — gets under way, the movie stops in its tracks. There's nothing to satirize here; the real thing is ridiculous enough. When the director (Neil Israel, who also made "Tunnelvision") brings on the ventriloquists and the tap-dancing moppets and the roller-skaters, he achieves a feeling of clutter and little more. The show also features a very unfunny Vietnamese rock band and fleeting guest appearances by Elvis Costello and Meat Loaf, neither of whom does anything that might make the rest of the movie worth sitting through for his fans.