If no distributor can ever handpick its audience, once Netflix sent its ribald and irreverent reframing of the U.S.’ foundational myth to the French animation festival, the streamer certainly came awfully close.Produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and directed by “Archer” producer Matt Thompson, the decidedly hard-r “America: The Motion Picture” played to a room primed to react when it screened in France as part of Annecy’s Midnight Specials sidebar this past Friday.Though the film played to a room at 65% capacity and at 8:30 pm rather than at midnight, you can blame French Covid-19 restrictions for that.
Whatever the case, the audience was surprisingly mixed in both gender and generation, and seemed to generally be in tune with the film that begins with Abraham Lincoln being mauled by a werewolf Benedict Arnold, in case you wondered about historical verisimilitude.“I enjoyed it,” Sarah, 34, told Variety as the screening let out.
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