There's No Place Like Utopia

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05/20/2020 Hilariously awful Right-wing propaganda. Not sure how anyone including conspiracy theorists, or Right-wingers can take anything this hack creates. See more 01/31/2016 What a piece of excrement! This films appeals to the ignorant, uneducated masses. Joel, Don't give up your day job, whatever that is. See more 07/26/2014 The other day I saw a trailer for a new "documentary" by Joel Gilbert, the creator of another "documentary" by the name Dreams of My Real Father. His newest venture is titled "There's No Place Like Utopia" where Gilbert attempts to make a connection between President Barack Obama and the character of the Grand Wizard from the L. Frank Baum book The Wizard of Oz. Before I dive into the play by play of this over two hour "documentary" let me apologize for how long and all over the place this review will be, as it is merely attempting to follow the events of the film in the chronological order. Are you a fan of watching people walk places on film? If so, toss out those Lord of the Rings directors cuts and prepare yourself for the masturbatory bliss that Utopia will deliver. The film begins with Gilbert walking; WALKING down the beaches of Malibu towards his gorgeous townhouse. The exhausted looking Gilbert eventually rests on his big comfy couch and turns on the television where he flips the channels between Mao, Stalin, Lenin and Barack Obama giving various speeches about the greater good of the common collective. All this thinkin' makes Joel confused and sleepy so he shuts off the TV box and movin' pictures so he can get some shuteye. A big tornado comes by and whisks this lowly commoner and his every man's Malibu dream home away into the sky. Joel awakens to see cows and cars and dogs the size of trees and Joseph Stalin all breezing by him with all the technological savvy of my 2002 high school video production project. The house finally comes to a landing on top a witch (we assume it to be at least.... As this never gets mentioned again) and Joel opens the door of his luxury fortress to a yellow brick road. Joel begins to walk; WALK down it cautiously. I hope you have the lube at the ready my pedestrian fetish having friends (who will now by referred to as "pedophiles" for the remainder of this review), because you are going to see this man sauntering down this road periodically throughout the ENTIRE movie for no apparent reason. A quick cut to Hollywood and Vine and we find Gilbert walking; WALKING through a crowd of furies and megalomaniac centerpieces of the short run TV series "I Want to Have a Famous Face." He is asking random people "why did Dorothy walk down the yellow brick road?" At one point he approaches a man obviously dressed as Johnny Depp's character from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake and asks if he was in fact a character in The Wizard of Oz. The man politely responds "I'm Willy Wonka...." Keep in mind that Gilbert created this movie and had full editing power (that he took great liberty with at times mind you) but thought it would be interesting to leave in the fact that mistook a character of a different movie for a possible character more than half a century apart from the movie he will be basing an entire political analogy off of. He eventually finds a young woman portraying Dorothy who explains an accurate summary of the story of The Wizard of Oz before explaining that she is currently living out of the back of her car. This makes Joel sad. Next we see Joel walking; WALKING down a driveway in Florida to the residence of Peggy Joseph, the woman who after the result 2008 presidential election said on national television "I don't have to worry about my mortgage being paid for, or my gas!" He gets to the door and we randomly cut away from this scene to find Joel sitting (awe, that's no way to tease my "pedophile" friends) with his conservative "experts" that he will consult throughout the film. These guys opine about the word "utopia", claiming that it is a word that American Progressives, Democrats, Socialists and Communists the world over obsess over. According to these "experts" liberals work to make a Utopian society where nothing bad ever happens, and that this is of course impossible. I am not sure exactly where these guys got the idea that people on the left even use the word "Utopia" as I haven't even heard this word used since I read Lois Lowry's book The Giver in the 7th grade, but who am I to point out their straw man argument? We now cut to Gilbert walking; WALKING to a rally where Democrats are protesting the Republican fueled government shutdown of 2013 posing as an aloof Obama supporter holding a sign that says "welcome to Utopia." He begins to speak with two native French women now living in America participating in the rally. He brings up the issue to the women that France is "so much better" than America because it has free education and health care programs, then asks why they moved to America if those programs were so great. He then can't wrap his head around the idea that they want to live in America while advocating for those successful programs to be instituted here was well. Gilbert now introduces us to an ex-KGB agent (who's name didn't seem worth writing down) sitting in a chair (alright you are really pissing us off now Joel, make with the walking before we go full agro and strap your happy ass to the stair climber of death) where he exclaims with all the educated vigor of Kathy Bates character of Mama Boucher in The Waterboy, "part of human nature belongs to devil, part belongs to god. Communism is devil." Gilbert, his conservative "experts" and this James Bond B-villain stereotype explain that Communists are godless, but think Communist leaders are gods. They don't believe in Christianity, however do believe in the resurrection as that is the reason all Communist leaders are mummified instead of buried. If you think Stalin hated dirt under his nails when he was living, just imagine how pissed off zombie Stalin would be after digging through six feet of hard packed Moscow soil vertically! Now we find Gilbert walking; WALKING around the Washington D.C. Mall where he finds a well assimilated group of Chinese-American teenagers. Upon probing, one of the boys claims that if you are a Christian living in China or if you tell others that you disagree with a Chinese politician in China that you will be murdered on the spot by state officials. An older Chinese man (you know, one that had reached the age of reason before leaving China) briefly calls bullshit on the teenager's claims, then has Gilbert scream at him "DO YOU WORK FOR THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT?!" Now we randomly cut to a heavily edited clip of Oprah Winfrey saying that there is a deeply racist culture in the south and the only way for it to end is for southerners to die. Of course the original unedited clip of Winfrey includes the explanation that the only way ingrained racism of the American south to end is for those people who were marinated in that culture and refuse to leave it behind to eventually die off, not be murdered as the movie not so subtly suggests without a hint of intellectual honesty. Next we are treated to a clip show of random liars, crackpots, wing nuts and conspiracy theorists to explain how Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground and "25 University of Columbia PHDs" planned out the logistics of exterminating 25 million people who would refuse to accept Communism. In the very next clip one of Gilbert's "experts" claims that Communism is a fairy tale for the illiterate and non-intellectual, so I suppose you should just forget anyone said anything the past 15 minutes about the University students and Columbia PHDs that attempted an oh-so-terrifying Communist takeover in the 1960's. Gilbert briefly superimposes the Weather Underground's logo over the Obama-Biden logo to reveal that they look nothing alike besides the fact that they are both semi-circular, however I have a feeling he was looking to prove otherwise (once again, YOU CONTROL THE EDITING JOEL! Why the hell would you leave that in?!) I know I just went a paragraph without mentioning the walking, but don't be sad dear "pedophile" reader as there is plenty of that going on in between nearly every scene. Gilbert spared every expense on CGI characters to walk down a computerized recreation of the Yellow Brick Road. You get to see this over and over and over and over and over again for no apparent reason. I am guessing this is to you "pedophiles" as animated Japanese school girl tentacle porn is to, well, pedophiles. So get your jollies while you can my bunion lovin' pals. Now we get to see Gilbert walking; WALKING through the ruins of Detroit. He fails to mention why he is doing so, but manages to ask every homeless passer by "where are the police? Where are the schools? Where are the fire trucks? Why is this place so shitty?" Of course if you have had the chance to see the Michael Moore's actual documentary "Roger and Me" you already know that Detroit was at its peak when tax rates and union membership (you know, things that pay for police, schools, fire brigades and gives labor the power to prevent CEO's from shipping jobs over seas and keeping extravagant pay for themselves while squeezing the average laborer) were at an all time high. Gilbert however is just asking questions. He stops walking ONLY BRIEFLY to talk to an Australian woman. "Does this kind of mayhem happen in Australia?" He asks. The woman responds with an emphatic "no!" I guess we should probably not mention to Joel how high the tax rates and minimum wage are in Australia and how much longer you can live on the dole in the land down under, it will only further confuse him and make him sleepy again and I for one don't need to sit through another dream sequence. Joel's "experts" mention the ongoing vast left wing conspiracy started in 1917 where liberals are trying to make everyone poor so they drain the social welfare systems to the point of capitalism collapsing, allowing for a military takeover. The logistics of how one of these things would lead to the other is never really hammered out, however my illiterate anti-intellectual Communist brain probably just can't handle the simple logic laid out before me. Please have mercy dear "pedophile" reader. Good news! Joel is on the move again! Walking; WALKING through the south side of Chicago. Here he goes to a community festival where everything seems normal, but beware dear reader as there is a Communist in our midst! Democratic (pinko) State Representative Christian Mitchell doesn't say anything incriminating so Joel spends most of his time talking to a poor black family in the ghetto selling snow cones off of their front porch. Every member of the family of child baring is receiving every form of government assistance possible. What is Joel's conclusion after talking to them? That the fact that they have government assistance is what keeps them living an unfulfilled life on government assistance! He doesn't provide an alternative, just suggests that they (and of course "we") would be better off without it! What is better than poor people with hardly anything? Poor people with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! If there is one thing Joel Gilbert knows is that massive groups of starving people only work within the legal system to maintain survival. They surely wouldn't become roving bands of pillaging barbarians.... Surely! Joel is now walking; WALKING through my hometown of Denver, Colorado. He meets up with some AM radio wing nut to talk about the pink elephant in the room: the fact that Barack Obama is a communist sleeper cell sent by his real father Frank Marshall Davis (which you would already know if you had watched his previous delusio...... "documentary"). They show a split screen of Davis and Obama making similar facial expressions and only one conclusion can be reached: they are both black, so Davis is obviously Obama's father. Who needs a paternity test or even a shred of evidence when they both have brown skin, big lips and white teeth? It's obvious people! Gilbert walks; WALKS to a medical marijuana facility where he can't buy weed because it isn't a recreational facility and he doesn't have a red card that would allow him to purchase medical grade cannabis. He finds some hippy outside of it who does have a red card for his high arches (wink wink) but he won't buy weed for Gilbert. Gilbert makes a tongue in cheek comment "at least they respect the.... LAWS in Colorado *wink wink*." -Let me just put the satire on hold for one quick moment to point out the fact that conservatives are the first to cry "states rights" when the states are doing things they like (preventing homosexuals from having equal rights, keeping women from having control of their own bodies, forcing people to follow their religious beliefs, owning black people as property) however whenever a state uses the legal system already put in place to legalize something they find to not be worthy of punishment it's a tongue in cheek way of skirting around the "real" law. Everything should be a states right, unless it goes against their conservative leanings. Then that shit is criminal!- Gilbert seems to have some dissent within the ranks of his conservative "experts" as one claims that the legalization of marijuana won't have any effect on politics, if anything it will help conservatives as the "pot smoking liberals will get high and forget to vote" while another claims it is all a "communist plot to create a drug culture and enslave the country." Joel decides to go walking; WALKING down to the Denver home of Vietnam veteran and overall gushing Gilbert fanboy, Bernard Nilson. Nilson is concerned that Denver has been ran rough shot over by illegal immigrants! Bernard claims that years ago Denver was the most beautiful city in the country (which I contend, is still) but now illegals have turned it into an ugly place. He drives Gilbert down my personal stomping ground, Colfax Avenue to show him the damage that the beaners... Eerrr... Illegals have inflicted. Now there are endless amounts of signs all yellow and red and green with sombreros and tacos and ugly words like "los" and "Guadeloupe" everywhere. FUCKING YUCK BRO! HOW UGLY CAN YOU GET?! Next Bernard walks Joel down to his former high school, Abe Lincoln High School that was once a "quality school" in Nilson's memory, but he wants to show Joel how it has changed in recent years. They walk through the door and immediately see the problem, it's a class made up of 100% Hispanic girls! OH THE HUMANITY! They then take an extended moment to show pages from the yearbook where entire columns are littered with names of Hispanic children! OH THE HORROR! Not brown kids! Anything but brown kids! Back in Bernard's kitchen he explains how illegals have taken over Denver. You see they have power because people who run voter registration drives not only do so in English, but in Spanish as well! If there is one thing we all know, it's that you cannot be a legal American citizen if your preferred language is Spanish. Joel goes walking;.... *Sigh*..... WALKING down the streets of Los Angeles where he meets some real life in the flesh illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala. They explain that their countries are terrible so they come to America for a better life for them and their families, the fucking nerve of these scum! He asks if they vote and they all say the obvious answer "no... We aren't legal, we can't vote" which seems to go against Gilbert's prior points about undocumented workers voting, that is until they say "but if we could, we would vote for Obama because he talks about amnesty which would help our families." Ah ha! We caught you, you snakes in the grass! We quickly snap back to Gilbert asking south Chicago rep Christian Mitchell about his stance on immigration. Mitchell appears to be ready to give an intelligent and well thought out response, so Gilbert adds the best special effects of the entire movie by inflating Mitchell's head into what looks like a green elf while speeding up his speech so you don't have to hear all that "fixing real problems" mumbo jumbo. Now we get some heavily edited clips of Michelle Obama while she was campaigning for her husband prior to his 2008 election. At one point an "expert" says "in order to take over, they must discredit the American dream." Here they take a clip of Michelle Obama going on and on about how awesome the American dream is and how it is a real thing that people still believe in, and cut out the middle to make it sound like she is saying "these kids thinks the American dream is a real thing? They think it ACTUALLY exists? HA!" More prime examples of intellectual *dis*honesty from a guy who is obviously not trying to trick you *but totally is*. Thank heavens Joel is walking; WALKING again in Detroit where he found another big problem. Islam is coming and the Mooslims are taking over! They are turning churches into Mosques! Oh dear Buddha no! One cult is becoming slightly more popular while another is declining in popularity! Watch society crumble as the common folk are subject to the minority rule and the dreaded Shariah Law! Gilbert walks; WALKS to an old folks home where he asks an elderly man if he is disturbed by the Moolim call to prayer being blasted over an external PA system 5 times a day. The old man responds "nope.... I don't notice any prayer." These poor ignorant bastards are so oppressed that they no longer even know when they are oppressed! Joel sits down with his businessman friend who once owned a factory in Detroit. He explains Detroit's downfall came when employees started trying to get fired so they could get unemployment insurance, because no matter what happens if you get fired from a job you receive unemployment benefits immediately because that is a real thing that happens. Then once the benefits ran out in a few months you would claim that you got hurt on the job (you know, months after you have been away from it) and receive disability benefits without any inquisition..... Because that is how it works you see? That is a real thing that totally wasn't made up. The still rich businessman ends the segment sitting in destroyed Detroit by saying "we just couldn't beat the system." If there is one thing you know for sure at the end of this clip, is that the rich guy totally got fucked over while those homeless guys are living high on the hog. We quickly cut back to Boris the James Bond villain wanna-be saying "in capitalism entrepreneurs are the creative class, while in communism politicians are the ruling class even though they do nothing!" They show Barack and Michelle Obama dressed aristocratically on the cover of American magazines such as Glamour. Because if there is one thing that screams leader of the proletariat, it is being on the cover of the communist Glamour Magazine. Now Joel is walking; WALKING through Newark, NJ where he is asking the locals "is Newark a Utopia to you?" Surprisingly the residents seem to think it is unsafe to be in Newark.... Wait a second, you mean to tell me that it is unsafe to be in Newark, NJ?! You mean good old American as apple pie values Newark? Not the Mayberry, Beaver Cleaver Newark, NJ I heard about as a kid!? Not the land of milk and honey where crime went to die Newark, New Jersey!? You must be speaking of another Newark because the the Newark I know hasn't been graced with a hint of corruption in recorded history. Well allegedly some communist by the name of Cory Booker (you know, that guy who helped crush Occupy Wall Street) is lying about the crime rate in Newark. Now you apparently can't even walk down the street without feeling like you might not be safe, in Newark, NJ of all places on earth! Joel goes talking; TALKING?! No dumb ass! WALKING! Down the street where he sees a homeless man keeping to himself on the side of a road. He walks up and accosts the man, asking him if he voted in the last election. The man says "yes, I voted for Barack Obama." YOU SEE! VOTER FRAUD! How can a homeless American citizen vote? He can't obviously! Joel just met this man on the street, so there is no way he was ever not homeless or ever had a permanent mailing address where he could register to vote from, as poor people aren't real Americans! More proof of how Democrats are rigging the system against real Americans; rich Americans. The film is finally attempting to wrap up so we return to Joel in the residence of Peggy Joseph asking her if President Obama did indeed pay her mortgage or personally filled up her gas tank. This will surely surprise all you leftists, but that did not in fact happen. I know all you leftists were fully expecting your "mortgage and gas" stipend to come from the postal service any day now but you will find out, as well as Peggy Joseph found out that there will be none. That free stuff that Obama never promised will in fact never come! WHAT A FRAUD! Joseph then repeats the broken analogy that Gilbert has been pushing for over 120 minutes now, that Obama is just like the tricky Grand Wizard of Oz. Communist Grand Wizard Obama might not pay your mortgage, but capitalist Joel Gilbert sure as hell will so long as you read exactly what he writes on this here script! We revisit Joel walking; WALKING down Hollywood Boulevard where he started this marathon of stupidity all started, asking people "how is Barack Obama exactly like the Grand Wizard of Oz?" As countless people look at him with pure confusion and ask to be finally left alone he get angry and begins to accuse them of being "afraid of Obama!" As each person looks at him with the same look of pure horror that you would direct at a man with a tattoo of the phrase "nigger lover" across his forehead eating a handful of his own human excrement while wearing a tin foil hat asking you to beat him with a bicycle chain, Gilbert gets increasingly more distraught and frustrated until he finally comes across an unlikely like minded individual. Do you remember the oddly uneducated, ignorant, delusional, toothless, living off of government assistance African American people that Gilbert was trying to cover up his hatred for in south Chicago? Well he found that another one of "those types" (but with facial tattoos) said he is afraid to speak badly about Obama because "Obama is a powerful man." If there is one thing conservative people love to make fun of, its ignorant, uneducated, impoverished minorities. That is unless they agree with them on anything, then they are "too smart for their own kind." Kind of like that monkey in that James Franco Planet of the Apes prequel, AmIright?! Gilbert finally, thankfully goes walking; WALKING home to Eastern Tennessee to see his dear old Mom. Momma Gilbert is incessantly harassed by her son (who's life choices have left her obviously disappointed after having paid for his extensive schooling) on her political leanings despite her desire to just WATER HER GOD DAMN HYDRANGEAS IN PEACE JOEL! After Joel finally fucks off like his mother had been hinting at for five solid minutes he gets to the moral of his film: that communism's evil principal is that if you just follow the Wizard and his lofty promises that everything will be alright. Which is such a strange assertion as anyone who has actually read The Communist Manifesto would know that true Marxist Communism is a leaderless movement unlike the dictatorships which used the name "communist" instead of its actual ideology. But why would Gilbert know anything so basic about communism? He only spent 2 hours and 15 minutes trying to make you fear it with rock solid arguments such as "Detroit sucks; therefor Communism" and "Newark isn't safe now; thanks socialist Cory Booker." If you are a true "pedophile" you will love this movie as at least half of it is just walking Joel Gilbert walking; WALKING all over the country. If watching a man trudge along beaches, urban ruins, parks, ghettos, a yellow brick road and places "ruined" by Mexicans for at least an hour doesn't seem to be worth your while, I suggest taking a pass for something a bit more realistic like that fancy new Exodus movie with Christian Bale. Bible stories always make such awesome, gripping over the top fictional type movies for some reason. Unlike this piece of shit, which sucked donkey balls on every level. The hallmark of a quality documentary (Inside Job, Food Inc., Waiting for Superman) is that it showcases a (real) issue with proof and evidence of the issue actually existing. It then shows the negative impact the issue is having on a populous and evidence of how the issue is directly causing that impact, followed by the suggestions as to how the problem could be fixed. Gilbert can't (and actually doesn't even try to) demonstrate that America has devolved into Soviet style communism, that President Barack Obama is a communist enforcing a communist agenda or that the problems he highlights throughout his are even the result of Obama's policies. Ironically Gilbert makes a much stronger case that capitalism is the root of the destruction each time he points out that there is an obvious lack of public services available to people This film isn't just terrible for a low budget documentary, it would be a terrible for a low budget Youtube video. The only person I suggest take the time out of their life to watch this piece of dog shit is a leftist like myself who likes to laugh at ignorant ramblings of delusional rich people with too much time on their hands and of course 700 Club viewers. See more 07/22/2014 very revealing. the truth hurts. See more 07/20/2014 Great movie. Shows what has happened to this country and why. All who care about the USA should see this. See more Read all reviews

There's No Place Like Utopia

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