Happy Thanksgiving? Not this year
Comedian Ike Barinholtz (best known as Nurse Morgan on The Mindy Project) makes his big screen writing and directing debut with The Oath, a very timely, very funny, yet very dark comedy in which he also stars. A razor sharp take on today’s charged political climate, Barinholtz’s pointed comedy resembles Jordan Peele’s (a producer here) Get Out in terms of its satiric edge. While some viewers may find the satire a little too grim, Barinholtz has definitely made a think piece worth talking about, and for that reason, his film is worth a look.
Barinholtz plays Chris Powell, a mild-mannered, liberal suburban Dad hooked on the news and married to the more levelheaded Kai (Tiffany Haddish, playing it relatively straight). Set in a slightly altered, Orwellian present day reality, the film opens with Kai and Chris learning that everyone in the country has been asked to sign a Patriot’s Oath, declaring loyalty to the (unnamed, but… ) President. The deadline for signing The Oath is the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday, natch). Both Chris and Kai are indignant and horrified, and vow to fight the good fight and never sign. As the movie flashes forward a year to Thanksgiving week, though, the stress of the pending deadline looms. Protests and violence rage (and Barinholtz gets off a good joke at Seth Rogen’s expense), and Chris can’t believe what’s happening in his country.
The question on everyone’s mind is “Are you going to sign?” and as Chris’s relatives convene on his house for the holiday, tensions between the more liberal and conservative family members come to a head. The family dynamic may cut a little close to home for many; of course, such head-shaking high decibel fights are easier to watch when they don’t come from your own family, and these scenes make up the bulk of the film’s best comedic moments. Chris’s brother Pat (played by Jon Barinholtz, Ike’s real life brother) and his new girlfriend, the seemingly prim Abbie (Meredith Hagner) are Chris and Kai’s polar political opposites. It doesn’t help that Abbie is already miffed at Chris, in a running gag about how he never remembers her name. Sister Alice (Carrie Brownstein, always a delight) and her husband (Jay Duplass) lean more toward Chris and Kai’s views, but aren’t quite as vehement about them. And parents Hank (Chris Ellis) and Eleanor (the great Nora Dunn) just want to keep the peace.
Into this already charged powder keg enter two agents of the CPU (that’s the Citizens Protection Unit – an offshoot of Homeland Security, making it seem all too real), who are tasked with enforcing the Patriot’s Oath. The agents, the volatile and extreme Mason (Billy Magnussen) and the more measured Peter (John Cho) have casually dropped by on Thanksgiving to “politely” inquire why Chris has not yet signed The Oath. Chris is incredulous and furious that these government agents would dare come to his home — on Thanksgiving, no less — and the situation escalates rapidly. The nervous but knowing laughter we experience in the first part of the picture starts to give way to disbelief and, as in Get Out, fear and horror. Let’s just say the film gets very dark very quickly (without giving too much away, guns and pretty heavy violence come into play), and calling the picture a comedy may actually be a bit of a misnomer. Be prepared.
But what we are left with is a cutting parable for our times, in which the extremity of our opinions has led to anger and blame at dinner tables all over the country. “The holiday table has changed forever,” Barinholtz remarked at the Q&A following the advance screening I saw. “Everyone is crazy and stressed out.” Yet, even as Barinholtz’s film portrays the harshest result of our frayed collective nerves (there’s a narrative nod to McCarthyism as well), it ultimately shows that there’s humanity in all of us, and that kindness eventually can and should prevail, even with — or perhaps especially with — those with whom being kind seems outright impossible.
So as both Election Day and Thanksgiving fast approach, take a deep breath, go see this movie with your politically opposite friends and family, and remember that, as Barinholtz put it during the Q&A, we have somewhat of an obligation to not let “this bullshit,” as he calls it, permeate and sever our relationships.
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The Oath opens today at Bay Area theaters.
