by Alan Yudman

If America’s current politics are driving you crazy and social media is driving you crazier, then THE OATH may be the perfect movie for you. Ike Barinholtz has crafted a funny and crazy commentary on America in 2018 (actually, maybe 2015-2018).

Barinholtz plays Chris, who is basically a human Twitter feed. The movie opens with Chris and his wife Kai (the amazing Tiffany Haddish) watching as a White House spokesman talks to the Press Corps about something called “The Patriot’s Oath”. It is apparently a sort of pledge of patriotism all Americans are being encouraged to sign before Black Friday the following year. Cut to Thanksgiving week as the deadline approaches and you immediately see how things have devolved. Chris has grown a patchy beard and the news is getting bleak. Chris rants and raves about how rights are being infringed upon, how the Government has become a bunch of brown shirted Nazis and that he’ll never ever sign the Oath.

This is all set against Thanksgiving with Chris’s family. His parents (Nora Dunn and Chris Ellis) his brother Pat and his girlfriend Abbie (Jon Barinholtz and Meredith Hagner) and his sister Alice (Carrie Brownsteing) and her family. Chris promises not to talk politics, but that doesn’t last long. His brother and Abbie (who is the subject of a very funny running gag) are conservatives. His parents seem disinterested and his sister is liberal like him. The arguments spiral out of control on Thanksgiving day and Chris winds up eating and sleeping in his car.

But that is when things really get crazy. Two agents (John Cho and Billy Magnussen) from the Citizens Protection Unit (CPU) show up to question Chris. He is defiant and the situation escalates beyond all control or reason. People are beaten, shot, tied up and well you get the general idea.

Barinholtz uses these extreme and funny situations to comment on the state of our politics and how obsessed people are with social media. It also is easy to see how those co-dependent situations could drive a situation beyond the extreme. You watch it and think, “this couldn’t happen”, but somewhere in the back of your head you are also thinking, “well, I guess it could happen”. That is what makes it effective and hilarious. The movie made me think about what I am doing on social media and whether it is at all healthy for America or Americans.

The cast is brilliant and funny. Barinholtz choices as a director a nuanced and hit every mark. If you spend your days raging at Facebook and Twitter, THE OATH may be just what you need to drag you back to sanity.