“The American Future: A History”-Own it on DVD January 20, 2009
- Release Date: January 20, 2009
- Publisher: BBC Video/Warner Home Video
- Price: $24.99 on Amazon.com (Buy It
)
- Rating: Not Rated
- Run Time: 240 minutes
- Special Features: Introduction, Photo Gallery
- Starring: Simon Schama
- Genre: Documentary
“The American Future: A History” isn’t a bad documentary but I think it might have been a bit too negative about America. Sure we’ve made some mistakes but I think we get criticized far too often. If we don’t help out overseas, we get blasted for being selfish and only caring about ourselves. If we do get involved, all of a sudden we are “evil.” Of course our mistakes shouldn’t be ignored but in my opinion, “The American Future: A History” dwells on our failures way too much and conveniently skips over all the great things we’ve done for the world.
Part of the problem is that this documentary was made by the BBC and Simon Schama, a British filmmaker. Schama now lives in America but it still isn’t particularly smart to use someone who hasn’t lived in the country his whole life to make a film about America. If I wanted to learn about any particular country, I would watch a film made by a person who was actually born and raised in that country. No matter what, if you weren’t born there you aren’t going to be completely unbiased or 100% correct on all your facts.
If you can ignore some of the anti-American messages in the film, the rest of it isn’t all that bad. Of course, you have to be interested in American history to really enjoy it but I highly doubt you’d even bother reading this review if you didn’t at least have a passing interest in it. Unfortunately, the title is a bit misleading since there isn’t a lot of talk about America’s future. I was a bit disappointed by that since not too many films talk about the future of the country, just the past. If the film spent a little bit more time in the area, it would have had something to set it apart from other documentaries about America. Without it, its pretty much just another average documentary.
The video and audio quality are both just average but since this is a documentary, that isn’t a big deal. Extras, on the other hand, are a bit disappointing. Only an introduction and photo gallery are included and neither are spectacular. Documentaries don’t usually have a lot of extras though so the lack of special features on this DVD isn’t surprising.
While I thought “The American Future: A History” was a bit too negative, it is still a decent documentary about the country. It doesn’t really set itself apart though so if you’ve already seen a bunch of documentaries about America, there won’t be anything new here.
