25 Gut Reactions to ‘My Son Hunter,’ the Very MAGA — and Wildly Boring — Biden Family Biopic
“This is not a true story,” former Mandalorian actress Gina Carano says in her MAGA star turn as a Secret Service agent in My Son Hunter, the new film dramatizing — with plenty of liberties, to say the least — the life of President Biden’s most controversial son.
It’s also, unsurprisingly, not a good movie.
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I was secretly a little hyped for My Son Hunter, which was released Wednesday on Breitbart News. How hard is it to fuck up a movie about drugs, sex, and allegations of international racketeering — especially when you have a heavy docket of salacious “source material” to work with, including (but absolutely not limited to) Hunter Biden having strippers eat M&M’s off his dick?
Not that hard, it turns out. The film promised to portray Hunter Biden as a Wolf of Wall Street-style operator, going on drug-fueled sex benders as he masterminds an international ring of corruption. It was instead an unimaginative slog that only served to expose the right’s ham-fisted desperation to portray President Biden as a sinister, endlessly corrupt overlord hell-bent on destroying America.
The Hunter Biden laptop saga that inspired the film has long fueled right-wing conspiracy theorizing while serving as one of the central scapegoats for former President Trump’s failure to secure reelection. It has remained a reliable source of grievance in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid, with Trump resuming his wailing about the “laptop from hell” and Republican lawmakers dutifully calling for the younger Biden to be investigated.
For a conservative movement looking to kick footholds into popular culture and Hollywood, My Son Hunter presented an opportunity to lend dramatic gravitas to a story that has essentially devolved into tabloid gossip. However, the film immediately loses itself in attempting to explain every angle, character, and headline of the laptop saga, resulting in a largely plotless 90-minute explainer poorly disguised as a narrative feature. It can’t decide if it wants to be funny or tragic, sympathetic or sarcastic, and it really doesn’t need to. The film serves primarily as a vehicle to trigger the libs and throw enough easter eggs at conservative viewers that they recognize that this film was made just for them. It’s Charlie Kelly screaming “Pepe Silvia!” to an audience who already knows who Pepe Silvia is and what office he works in.
My Son Hunter was rich in the absurd, but not in a way that was compelling. I wasn’t blown away so much as I was cringing into my couch cushions. Here are my gut reactions, from start to finish, which is hopefully all you’ll need to get a sense of what to expect from the right’s failed foray into feature-length film:
They made Joe way shorter and buffer than he should be.
A BLM protester saying “I think I got a viral video … I’m gonna trend” is just Oscar-level dialogue.
Not even eight minutes in and we’ve already had extremely forced call outs of BLM, student loans, and pronouns.
From the BLM protest to the strip club…
Hunter and his new stripper friend are taking a drive from the Chateau Marmont to skid row, just for funsies (to buy more crack).
She’s a stripper with a heart of gold, and they both have daddy issues. She can fix him.
The writing may be cringe, but having an extended segment on all his dead relatives just makes Hunter look more sympathetic.
We’ve reached the “I slept with my dead brother’s wife” portion of the film.
Joe finds out about the laptop, and wants to know “everything that’s on that laptop that can ruin my erection.” It’s a sex joke, get it?
Hunter is reminding his dad how many women have accused him of sexual harassment, ‘cause they’re cool like that.
Three out-of-context Joe Biden quotes from one scene: “Lying dog faced pony soldiers.” “You fucked Beau’s widow and her sister AT THE SAME TIME?” “I’ll never forget Cornpop, he was a bad dude.”
Shady Ukranians plotting their crimes in a church? Who’s the only man who can help them? Joe Biden.
Gina Carano is breaking the fourth wall to explain something to me, but all I see is Hunter and some oligarchs hitting it doggy style behind her.
The last 20 minutes have just been a recap of the Burisma conspiracy, plus one blowjob.
It’s a good thing they tell us all of these things are facts otherwise how could I trust them?
Joe Biden is apparently both too dumb to use a phone and also mastermining an international corruption racket.
I may have hallucinated but there was just a 10-second cut of Gina lookin like Morticia Addams while getting intimately sniffed by Joe.
The stripper (who has revealed her name is Grace) is written as a sex doll set to the “liberal” dialogue function. She’s also an expert on the Chinese surveillance state.
There is way less degeneracy in this movie than I was promised.
I spoke too soon. A hit of crack has teleported us to Bucharest.
This film reminds you every five minutes that Joe Biden is Hunter Biden’s father.
The script feels like it was written by Ben Shapiro’s secret fanfic alt.
Grace can no longer handle it, she cannot fix him, she absconds with recordings of Hunter admitting to everything
BREAKING! THE BIDENS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED! TRUMP WINS BY A LANDSLIDE!
LOL JK, it was all a dream! The media will never care about the truth!
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