Mitt

When I saw that there was a documentary about Mitt Romney and his campaign for President of the United States both in 2008 and in 2012, I just had to ask myself... why?

I'll be honest, I voted for Mitt Romney. I could go into the whole perception I had of the 2012 election and how I really wasn't satisfied with either candidate. There's a lot I could talk about but that's getting a little more political than I want, and really more political than this movie was.

The purpose of this movie was to "pull back the curtain" show Mitt Romney as a human being and give him a real touching image as opposed to the stone cold, Republican, big business, 47% hating, as John Oliver once said, "The man who just fired your dad" image he often had during the campaign.

And I'll give the movie its credit.

The movie does show a side of Mitt Romney I don't think a lot of people got to see or chose not to see.

There is a sense of the importance of family to him and there is a humorous side that Ann Romney insisted that he had during the election but never really came out.

I also think there's a lot of things that portray Romney as an incredibly intelligent, honest, and down to earth guy in this movie. And there's a lot of pressure that gets him down.

But unfortunately, I didn't really feel as though the entire movie was 100% honest about some of the glaring issues with Mitt Romney as a candidate. You can tell the guy, Greg Whiteley really likes the Romney's and decides to put in what makes them look good. Also, I read he only had access to the family, not the campaign meetings or planning. So that's what he put in. And I think for the purposes of this film, the film accomplishes what it was meant to accomplish.

The movie is very one sided and therefore puts Romney in a much better light than any other documentary might. But it does give kind of a personal touch to a guy who actually got a lot of shit during the 2012 election and that's fair.

There's a great documentary that was made by PBS called Taking on the Kennedys. It followed the campaign of a relatively unknown doctor by the name of Kevin Vigilante who ran against Patrick Kennedy in the Congressional election of 1994. That documentary was more focused on the Vigilante's campaign strategy and how name recognition and campaigns fund play an intricate role in the results of an election.

And these documentaries are very similar because they're the story of the losers. You know from the beginning that both these candidates lose.

I think what Taking on the Kennedys did right was that they really didn't portray the Kennedy family in a great light. In that documentary, it was kind of hard to see Kevin Vigilante as anything but the obvious choice for Congress, and yet Patrick Kennedy won.

With Mitt, I feel they were trying to just give Mitt Romney a human side. Give him some kind of relatable situations that more poses it as a pity party. Taking on the Kennedys is pointing at a flaw in our election process and the attention span of voters. Mitt is just giving a look into the failures of a Presidential candidate. And when it comes to a close, you just have to ask yourself, so what?

Why did I just sit there for an hour and a half watching a movie that I know is not a happy ending for the main characters? Am I suppose to say, its sad because he should have won? I would hope Republicans wouldn't even say that. Unless Barrack Obama drops a nuke on Alabama for opposing Health care or something comes up that we can definitely say, that wouldn't have happened if Mitt had been President, I just don't know what I was suppose to get out of this movie.

Like I said before, I voted for Romney. I knew he wasn't just a Republican robot, I knew he probably had a human side to him, I knew he loved his family, I knew he had times where he was vulnerable and I really liked those scenes in this movie.

But again I ask, what's the point?

If you're telling me Romney should have been President because he was a nice guy, you haven't shown me anything saying Barrack Obama isn't a nice guy.

So I'm kind just kind of bummed out by Mitt. They make a bunch of jokes about how the people who lose Presidential races are just mocked as losers for the rest of their lives. And unfortunately, that's kind of the case with Mitt Romney. At least a year later, yeah people just kind of see him as a joke. Its sad.

I think this documentary would have been better had it given the audience a little bit more than and they lived happily ever after even though they lost. If this was to make Romney seem like this great guy, they should have held off, waited until he did something great despite losing the election. That would have been a great story, and it would have given the subject of the documentary a little more dignity.

So Mitt is an interesting watch. Probably not the greatest documentary you've ever seen but if you just wanted to see Mitt Romney interact with his family, and watch a film telling us how great he is, then this is the movie for you. For me, I want the guy I voted for to get a little bit more credit than this mope fest.

So that's my review of Mitt. Have you seen this documentary? If you have comment below and discuss.

I'll leave you with this. I need something to pick me up so here's Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama rapping.