The Hater

An interesting premise, but the film falls completely flat. Dorothy never grows or becomes truly likable at any point. Unlike Doc Hollywood or My Cousin Vinny, Dorothy never really comes to respect her hometown or warm to its inhabitants. Midway through, the film also hints that the bullying of Dorothy wasn't necessarily one-sided, but it never delves any further and Dorothy doesn't reflect on any mistakes she might have made. Worse, she starts and ends the film manically spewing unfounded assertions and spouting slogans. Dorothy remains a schemer throughout the campaign, so she never moderates or compromises on her far left environmentalism nor does she manage to learn what folks on the Right think. In short, you're far better off watching a political comedy like The Campaign, where the two main characters aren't political stereotypes and neither is entirely good or entirely bad.

40 minutes into this movie and I had a wild guess that the lead of the movie must be the writer and director. I have never seen her before, and it seemed to be a semi-amature vanity production. Sure enough, she wrote, directed and stars in this ridiculous movie. As of the 40 minute mark, it is not even remotely funny, and Dorothy's behavior is simply anxiety inducing. Done.

Great movie. Main character seemed annoying at first but does a good job overall. Would have loved it if it mentioned neoliberal donors owning both parties. But its nice to have movies like this as a conservative could never run a grass roots campaign in real life without any large donors as we rely on those. But other than that nicely done. As an open minded conservative this movie does a great job trying to appeal to everyone.

The basic premise of this movie is that all republicans are closet liberals. They make that point very subtly, I'll give them that. Pick a hot button topic and this movie brings it up and attempts to prove the liberal agenda is correct.

Dorothy is a sincere and well-informed climate activist. After being arrested at a protest, she's laid off from her political writing job for a mainstream, corporate kind of Democrat. Dorothy is more authentic, passionate and overall more leftist than the people she's been working for and clearly doesn't belong in corporate mainstream politics. So...she moves back to her childhood home, a small town in Texas, because she thinks her talents are being wasted where she is. How she comes to this conclusion is a bit sketchy, BUT in reality a lot of liberal Americans with the financial ability to do so have moved to Red and "Purple" states to try to liberalize the culture there away from a Republican stranglehold. Presumably, this is Dorothy's goal.

Instead she embarks on a campaign as a faux Republican because she finds a state loophole in Texas that would allow the Dem candidate to win if she wins as a Republican and withdraws at the last second. Obviously, it's something so hair-brained that it could only be the plot of a fictional movie. Over the course of The Hater, Dorothy learns that the women in her town, at least, aren't actually homophobic, hateful or pro-life. Instead she discovers kind, genuine people who are locked into some kind of conservative nightmare who would break free from that view given half a chance.

I think there's some truth to that reasoning, especially with wives of conservative men in Red states having been pressured to vote Republican just because their husband does. The movie makes it's point, but its done in a clumsy and unrealistic way. I enjoyed the first half of the film more so than the second, especially the end.