The Dick Cheney biopic divides critics, with one of them saying that the 'post-credits scene makes an already bad movie truly atrocious.'
- Dec 28, 2018
AceShowbiz - Dick Cheney biopic "Vice" has received hate and love from movie critics, despite numerous nominations it has obtained from several award shows. Among those who is not impressed with the Adam McKay-directed movie is Slate senior editor Sam Adams.
While he makes it clear that he thinks the movie is bad, his review particularly takes aim at the post-credits scene, which features a focus group bickering about the accuracy of the polarizing, politically charged film. In fact, he writes in the headline, "Vice's Post-Credits Scene Makes an Already Bad Movie Truly Atrocious.'
Adams describes the said post-credits scene, "The first person we hear from is an older white man in baggy jeans and a sports jersey who complains that 'the whole thing's liberal. It's got a liberal bias.' Another man, this one wearing glasses and a collared shirt, retorts, 'It's all facts, right? They had to vet all this with a lawyer.' The first man shoots back, 'You would say that, libtard. ... You probably like Hillary,' then the second calls Trump an 'orange Cheeto,' and a few seconds later, they're on the floor scuffling as the group dissolves in chaos."
"It's not often that a few seconds of footage has the power to retroactively poison an entire film," he writes, adding that the movie's already a loss, but the post-credits scene puts it beyond redemption. He goes on accusing McKay of a "rancid," "bad-faith attack on the film's assumed audience."
He explains that he initially figured McKay thought "the details of Cheney's political machinations" were too "difficult to absorb," so he dumbed the story down for the audience. "But the credits sting makes clear that, as far as McKay is concerned, the problem isn't that this stuff is too difficult to understand. It's that he thinks you're a f*****g moron," Adams adds.
In another word, Slate's Twitter account describes the post-credits scene, "Imagine if Nick Fury came out at the end of a Marvel movie to say comic books are for idiots."
Adams concludes his review as writing, "It's like eating a meal of table scraps and then being served a shot of raw sewage to wash it down."
NewsBusters' Gabriel Hays previously called "Vice" a "character assassination" of Cheney. "Of course, the director, Adam McKay, is an avowed lefty, so it's not hard to see that his version of the vice commander-in-chief is one of a cunning and secretive man, who seeks to consolidate power behind an unassuming, and almost bumbling, President George Bush," he wrote. "It appears to fall right in line with the lefty mythos of Cheney being a Darth Vader-like character wielding some dark power behind the throne."
Some others, however, manage to get the laugh from the comedy-drama film that chronicles Cheney's desire to become the most powerful Vice President in America's history. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Across the board in 'Vice', everyone has risen to the occasion of their individual challenges, none of them easy, to collectively pull off a political satire that both provokes great laughs and hits home with some tragic truths."
McKay has not specifically responded to Adams' critique, but he acknowledged the mixed reviews in a recent tweet. "This movie has inspired varying opinions from 'best of the year' to 'worst of the year.' Respect to every single POV out there," he wrote.
