South of the Border

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You'll never catch me saying anything good about the former US administration. In fact, I kinda like Chavez for the crazy things he said and did. But, okay... I see that Stone wants to show us that Chavez is just a normal guy who wants good things for his country. But he was a military guy and he is a politician. So...

Some parts of this film felt very staged, I mean does Hugo really drive his own car? He works till 3am everyday and he enjoys reading boring textbooks? Come on, dude. We didn't buy it when we saw that kind of shit in a Riefenstahl film and we don't really buy it now. No, no, no: I am not calling Chavez Hitler. But I comparing Oliver to Leni.
I'm also not saying that the administrations before Chavez were good, but I am not calling Hugo a saint either.

This is a propaganda film. But it also shows the propaganda fed to the public by American 'news' shows, so that's cool.

By the way, has anybody else noticed that El Presidente is the fattest Venezuelan around?

I do like the fact that Hugo doesn't give a shit. He's the president, he's backed by the army, you don't like it? Fuck off. He even jokes about building the Iranian atomic bomb. The dude's pimping. But then Stone says: "As an ex-soldier, I understand," you just know that these two are just gay for each other (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Then we move on to the rest of the continent: there's the coca-leaf munching soccer-playing Bolivian president, the Argentinian friend-of-Castro president, who happens to be the wife of the ex-president, by the way. They are named Kirchner. That sounds German. A German name in South America? Hmm... How could that be?...

At the end of the day (as I seem to say in every review), South America's got many countries with many governments and all of them are good and cool, as opposed to all the other governments in the world. South America seems to be the only place in the world that is not corrupt. Yes, very objective, Oliver. He even tells a president: "Chavez will give you that loan if I talk to him." Right. Okay. Right. Yeah.
And why is Chavez with Stone when the latter's in Brazil? That's just getting creepy. Then Hugo almost hugs Lula and calls him 'my brother' (in English), just like a drunk Colombian stumbling out of an Istanbul bar (private joke).

So we have 40 minutes of Chavez, then a few minutes with all the other presidents, who chat with Stone. But they all still sound like political speeches, which is to say: bullshit.

But you know what? You got an American director interviewing all those people and it's obvious most of them speak English. Guess who doesn't speak Spanish? You'd think that while filming 'U-Turn,' Jennifer Lopez could have taught him a couple of words of Spanish between blowjobs.

You know, it's cool to be anti-American, but when you say Chavez and Castro are cool, that's fucked up, too. Fact is, it's a lesser of two evils kind of deal. Or not.
Everyone's just evil. And that's cool.

You know, Stone's been working on his 'Secret History of the USA' and I'm sure it will be very interesting, but because he made a documentary about Castro (well, it was more like a long interview than a documentary) and 'South of the Border,' his USA documentary will be destroyed and ridiculed because people will say: "Well, he's obviously anti-American, so everything he says is BS!"

But, okay, sure: let's have South America rise as a South-American Union; sure, the people need the money and the good life. But, come on: are the current leaders really the solution? If Bolivar or Guevara couldn't do it, then how could they? Or why? Just so they can stay in their palaces and get even fatter?

Que viva la revolucion, maricon!