The Party's Over (2001)

          A scruffy Philip Seymour Hoffman takes to the road with a camera crew in the six months before the 2000 presidential election to document the dysfunctions of our political system. There's nothing new, ambitious, or very challenging about that goal, and Hoffman does nothing to deepen or clarify the film's subject, which by its end is entirely predictable—more disgruntled citizens (mainly from the left), some of them famous, others obscure, like homeless activists and sloganeering protesters. The film also loses focus by a staccato presentation of endless hot button issues, including farm aid, the WTO, the Million Mom March, legalization of drugs, capital punishment, welfare, corporate influence, voter apathy, etc. Much of the film focuses on the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions. Just how much can you learn from thirty-second sound bites from Willie Nelson, Charlton Heston, Ralph Reed, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, Rosie O'Donnell, Bianca Jagger, Pat Robertson, Barney Frank, and Newt Gingerich? Of course, at this point the film is also badly dated.