‘Am I Racist’: Is It A Movie?
Conservative media personality Matt Walsh trolls DEI grifters in his latest sort-of film
‘Am I Racist?’ the new film from conservative media personality Matt Walsh, is basically a series of comedy sketches that call out the charlatans who profit from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) seminars. When it homes in on what is essentially a sham industry that exploits the guilt of well-meaning white liberals, it hits its mark brilliantly. When it strays beyond that central premise, it’s not quite as effective.
AM I RACIST? ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Matt Walsh
Written by: Matt Walsh
Starring: Matt Walsh, Robin D’Angelo, Saira Rao
Running time: 101 mins
Anyone who calls Walsh the “right-wing Borat” is way off. Sacha Baron Cohen, whether you agree with his politics or not, is a comic chameleon who hews close to Peter Sellers and Charlie Chaplin, willing to go to outrageous lengths to get a laugh. Walsh is a bearded dork who is more like the lone Republican on the staff of your college humor magazine. He’s wry and funny, but he’s no actor.
Walsh has been taking to the X since the release of Am I A Racist? to call out mainstream film critics who refuse to review his movie, because, ironically, they call it racist. This movie is not racist. Walsh drily points out early on that he has either 15 or 17 Black friends. A Black producer, Ben, plays a relatively big role in the proceedings. Walsh interviews any number of everyday African-Americans and clearly is not making fun of them unless they are DEI educators or some related form of hustler. He features an interview with a Black author who has written a book called “The Hate Crime Hoax.”
Walsh’s original sin is not that he’s racist. It’s that he’s a conservative. Other critics should be able to watch this movie and engage with its central thesis without feeling triggered. This movie, which is essentially a Michael Moore documentary about race for right-leaning audiences, is well worth their consideration.
But is ‘Am I Racist?’ really a movie? Yes, in that it’s about 100 minutes long and I saw it on a screen in a sad, mildewy neighborhood multiplex. But as a documentary narrative, it’s pretty flimsy. While Walsh is hard-trolling a crummy diversity seminar in Boulder, Colorado, the educator and attendees recognize him and call the cops because they feel “unsafe.” This sets the “plot” into motion, whereas Walsh dons a bad man-bun wig, changes his glasses, and gets an online DEI certification, so he can teach other white people how to be “anti-racist.”
The problem is right there in the premise. We know from the first five minutes, or from reading three of his Tweets, that Walsh thinks that “anti-racism” is a nonsense scam. So the movie’s framing, that he’s on some kind of quest to expunge himself of his own so-called racist beliefs, is snarky-corny in a way that doesn’t quite work. Walsh is really just disguising himself as a DEI con-man to own the libs. That’s a good enough premise in itself. The narrative window dressing that he half-plays with falls flat. Either own the libs or be a lib who organically discovers that your whole existence is a lie. You can’t be both.
The movie has timeline and location problems, too. Walsh is walking around Lower Broadway in Nashville, then the next scene he’s drinking a hurricane in New Orleans’s French Quarter. How does he show up on morning shows in Virginia and Utah? What are the mechanisms? What is the timeline? You’re caught up in the point of view, but the storyboard feels cluttered.
When Walsh just sits down with various people who have profited from the DEI era, like the activist who got a kid kicked out of the Arizona State University library for having a sticker on his computer that supports the police or the woman who sued Disney because a park worker dressed like the Sesame Street character Rosita didn’t high-five her kids, Am I Racist? is pretty effective. The people just look ridiculous on their own merits.
A skit where he goes to Washington, D.C., to try to get people to change the name of the Washington Monument to the “George Floyd Monument” works less well. He tells them he will paint it black and add 30 feet to the top. But it mostly plays out like a Daily Wire version of an Instagram live video where a host tries to get stupid college kids to name three European countries. He also makes fun of the Jussie Smollett hate-crime hoax, but his “re-creation” of the incident is less funny than Smollett’s obviously cornball attempts to persuade the media that his insane story is true. The bit falls kind of flat.
A sketch where Walsh infiltrates a Race 2 Dinner, where hustlers Saira Rao and Monica Jackson try to persuade wealthy white women that they are privileged and evil, works much better. Rao, in particular, comes across as more than a bit evil as she talks about how she hates America and wants to “burn it all down.” Meanwhile, Walsh is working as a waiter at the dinner, wearing an ill-fitting N95 mask, and breaks plates or overfills water glasses whenever Rao says something ridiculous.
But the film’s money shot comes in an extended interview with Robin D’Angelo, the author of White Fragility. Somehow, Walsh ends up manipulating D’Angelo into giving producer Ben $30 out of her wallet for “reparations”, even though she says earlier that’s not how reparations work. “I never say no to cash,” Ben says. Walsh then reveals that D’Angelo charged him $15,000 for the interview. This is the sickest of burns.
Am I Racist? is intermittently hilarious, often thought-provoking, and a thematic and narrative mess. It’s a movie that will be remembered more for the tizzy it caused among people who oppose its existence than for the points it’s actually making. “We are trying to expose the so-called expert class—our self-appointed moral superiors who impose their doctrines on us from on high,” Walsh writes on the X. There are plenty of “moral superiors” on the right who also try to impose doctrines on ordinary people. But the DEI grift, as Walsh shows amply in this piece of work, is very real. If liberals would just be willing to come to grip with their excesses and hypocrisies, then maybe they could reassume the moral high ground. But the reaction to Am I Racist? is just adding fuel to Walsh’s fire.
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Thank you for your review. The other Critic “Jessie Gender” left a pretty butt hurt review.
Neal, I enjoyed your article and I loved the movie, but there’s no universe where “honed in on” is correct usage. As I said to the other commenter, wide usage does NOT confer correctness. “Hone” means to refine or improve, “home” means to approach, e.g. homing pigeon, homing beacon.
Fine I will change it jeez
Excellent. Words matter, language matters. Thank you. Again, great article from you.
Yeah it matters. Especially to some uptight people who have no life and have a butt pucker attack every time they see something that triggers them. So stupid!
Your wording is wrong: “When it hones in on …”
The correct usage is: “When it homes in on …”
both are acceptable
Good review Neal. Feels balanced and well thought out. I am yet to see the movie, but from what I can gather and will be good to know when going into watching the movie is you have to kind of pick what you want from the movie Comedy or a Documentary. It seems like it struggles to do both, just from the small unbiased reviews I have read (wish there was more).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hone%20in%20on
to find and go directly toward (someone or something)
“The missile was honing in on its target.”
As your source says: “Note: Although hone in on is widely used, many people regard it as an error for home in on.”
“Hone in on” is never correct. Wide usage does not confer correctness. And you and the article author know this.
Well… for starters, an official review (that is one that has to be kind of accepted by the site) that goes AGAINST what the Establishment promotes is allowed here!? Quite a shocker in and of itself.
So, points scored on this front for me already!
Now, “a movie that will be remembered more for the tizzy it caused among people who oppose its existence than for the points it’s actually making.” – I dare to disagree here. I believe it is actually quite the opposite. Why?
For us, normies, who hate wokism and are sad that so many US citizens have TDS, the point made in the film is valid; this is actually of paramount importance – whereas that above-mentioned “tizzy” is a marginal issue – after all, DEIs and other lefty wokes have been proven (kind of by definition by now) to go tizzy at everything and anything. You simply cannot dissent with them, or they will… we well know what.
To sum up, this documentary should, and hopefully will, serve the purpose of opening eyes for fence-sitters of all sorts, both for short-term purposes (the ever important election this Nov.) and long-term ones, for the damage inflicted (mostly in the US unis and colleges in the 1980s and later on) brought about generational consequences and it is going to take equally long period of time to revert it all – and this is where pearls like “Am I racist?” could serve as a go-to place for flagging up and exposing the madness of Wokeism as well as pinpointing its brutal daughter: DEI.
We do not care what the Establishment promotes. This site was the first one to declare “it’s safe to go to the movies” in May of 2020. We publish articles about censorship on the right and on the left. If the Establishment condemns a movie, we are MORE likely to write about it, not less. My problem with Am I Racist? is not its point of view, it’s in some narrative inconsistencies. They don’t matter a ton, but if Matt Walsh is going to present something as a FILM, as opposed as to a sketch comedy show or a series of articles, then I’m going to review it as such. There was little in the movie about the consequences of DEI. It was mostly taking shit out of the ideology’s peddlers. That’s valuable, but it’s not the final word.
Yeah, I don’t think too many people really think the plot was supposed to be genuine. Even Matt Walsh says that he purposely used a “disguise” that barely changed his appearance. Everyone knows the point was to own and expose the libs and that’s exactly what Matt Walsh did. Scoring it on the premise that the plot was intended to be taken as genuine is kinda missing the point in my opinion. Given the controversy surrounding the film, I have some skepticism regarding your review. It seems like your critique is designed as a way to avoid giving it a higher score. What you wrote might be true, but also misses the point of the film. It’s a very funny film, that makes valid points regarding race in America, and – in the style of Borat – gives the DEI grifters the opportunity to expose themselves, which they are happy to take. Those elements, on their own, are worth better than 3/5. Just my opinion.
My critique is a way to give this movie exactly the score that it deserves. This is a site for film criticism, politics is not our first concern. As a movie, it’s kind of slapdash and sloppy. There is some funny stuff in it, and the gotcha moments are truly excellent. It’s a humorous exposé of some ridiculous cultural excesses, but it’s not a masterpiece of cinema.
The film was meh. I think the only reason it has a high score on Rotten Tomatoes is because the only people going to see it are Walsh’s subscribers / the Daily Wire audience and movie reviewers. It’s funny to people who already agree with him, but doesn’t do much for those that don’t because it doesn’t really prove anything other than the fact that DEI consultants are way overpaid. That would have been a good angle to keep the focus on.
Most of the rest was Walsh pushing people to do or say ridiculous things that they were not at all inclined to do or say. Even DiAngeo said he was being “weird.” If the people you’re trying to prove are extreme tell you that you’re the one acting strangely, you’re not proving your point. And the parts where people really were saying extreme things, like the dinner convo, he continually disrupted.
Matt Walsh says plenty ridiculous things in his commentary, but a whole movie designed towards a ridiculous premise?
I suppose if you start from the notion that anyone and anything fielding subject matter having to do with race is somehow DEI related or better, a DEI hustler, you can probably gather enough B roll to tape together enough footage to feel accomplished.
Even with the review, one can only wonder what a kid being kicked out of a library for a sticker or a Disney character incident has, at all, to do with DEI. But the movie is ultimately called Am I Racist, so Walsh it would appear, began the journey itself feeling triggered.
He should probably just say “I really hate that people in the corporate sphere want me to be more socially mindful. And I really hate hearing that being white means something in this country.”
Instead…..