It's one of the tribal rites of American family life: the holiday tradition of turning Thanksgiving week into a blood feud of fighting over politics. The dinner conversation unleashes everyone's closet bully and triggers the kind of ideological thuggery broadcast on AM talk radio: no rules, no controls, no filters.
That's the kind of ideological hostility that's exploited by Ike Barinholtz's "The Oath," an abusive sitcom in which Chris (Barinholtz) and Kai (Tiffany Haddish), a progressive married couple, watch his family lose their collective mind as liberalism gone paranoid and belligerent conservatism crash head-on.
It's set in a slightly exaggerated parallel world where the federal government insists that citizens affirm their allegiance to the president by signing a "Loyalty Oath." The administration presents it as a voluntary act that carries no consequences for refusal, but it offers some sweet social benefits to those who pledge allegiance. What have you got to lose? Don't you trust POTUS? No way could he be fanning the flames that keep his base angry, aroused and loyal.
Chris feels his alarm bells ringing the day the oath is announced. His suspicion grows throughout the following year as the nation approaches the sign-up deadline, the Black Friday following Thanksgiving. His constant diet of news from sources that reaffirm his views makes life seem bleaker by the day. And when his right-of-center relations arrive for the Thanksgiving feast at Chris and Kai's home, his unwavering refusal to sign is a decidedly unpopular opinion.
Not that these folks were very close to begin with. The family clearly has a long history of mutual insults being flung. Chris' brother, Pat (played by Barinholtz's real-life brother Jon), is a volcano of sibling rivalry, and Pat's new girlfriend, Abbie (Meredith Hagner), is vindictive pettiness personified, in twinsets and pearls. Mom and Dad (Nora Dunn and Chris Ellis) are a bit too checked out to be actively hostile, mostly, but they're far from the folks that politically correct true believer Chris would want. His sister, Alice ("Portlandia's" Carrie Brownstein), acts like his closest ally, except when the others are watching.
As emotions come to a boil, the clan pays more attention to their personal conflicts than the fact that the government is opening fire on protesters.
A sharp, dark comedy could be assembled from all this stuff and nonsense. Note the word "could." It doesn't happen here.
Granted, Barinholtz sets out to mock people who deserve to be mocked, giving especially good shots to himself as Chris. He's a kale and yoga mat version of toxic masculinity, the sort of hard-liner who maintains a state of being perpetually offended even when his wife, a levelheaded peace keeper, tells him to chill out. One could wring the pretension and entitlement out of this character like a soaking wet sponge. The film gives him a good skewering.
But then, as the signing deadline looms, two menacing government officials (John Cho and Billy Magnussen) enter the home to make sure Chris is not "impeding a private citizen's choice to sign the Oath." The third act gives this parody of political prejudice a grotesque swing into "Purge" territory, a major crisis that feels less like a daring, self-referential plot shift than a wrong turn.
Blood starts flowing, bodies start falling and chuckles, in short supply from the start, trickle to a full stop. References to family-splitting federal programs that put parents and children in prisons don't restore the comic mood, either. The film crosses a red line, and despite an ending of forced optimism, doesn't regain its original comic footing.
Give him credit, Barinholtz is a filmmaker of strong convictions. Those standards may feel unwarranted, wrongheaded and bizarre, but at least he's upfront about them.
