American Crime: Impeacment raises some interesting questions. Ultimately, it is supposedly a docudrama about an important moment in American history: the impeachment of a president.
It is uncomfortable to compare this to other films in the genre which cover events like Lincoln's Herculean effort to amend the constitution abolishing slavery before the expiration of his first term, or Kennedy's missile crisis or Watergate, for example.
These were all watershed moments in US history.
This film is about the second time a US President was impeached by Congress, the first being Andrew Johnson owing to a constitutional crisis between the executive and legislative branches. The second impeachment was about the Chief Executive lying under oath to Congress about his sex life.
Looking back from the Trump era, one could hoist the old canard about this being America's "loss of innocence" because of the discovery that presidents have illegitimate sex. Well, no. The JFK presidency was still in living memories. Both Harding and Cleveland had illegitimate children. So it's not that. Perhaps you could say its about the hardening of American political tribalism and the rise of propagandistic journalism in the post-fairness doctrine era at the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle. Effectively, though, it's about the decline of political discourse into celebrity entertainment and cancel culture.
Perhaps purposely or by accident the film takes living people and turns them into flat characters: Clinton, the manipulative narcissist, Monica the starry-eyed bimbo, Linda Tripp the sour and vindictive ugly broad. The only character that seems real is Ann Coulter, who is a cartoon figure to begin with.
That is the problem. The dialogue is wooden. All the characters are self- seeking and none of them are likable (actually, that might be accurate).
If you lived through this in reality, the actors in their make-up remind one of "Spitting Image" marionettes, only without the satiric intent.
In short, the series is just plain boring. It could just as easily be set in a high school populated by horny and self-seeking adolescents.
Then again, given the political culture in the Trumpian era, maybe that's the point.
