Morton Downey Jr. grew up in the shadow of his popular-singer father. He then, ahem, distinguished himself with an in-your-face television talk show that took a (arguably phony) hard-right stance on hot-button issues like AIDS and the Tawana Brawley rape case, while giving his guests and audience a chance to act out in a base, Roman Colosseum fashion. This fairly generic yet always absorbing doc posits this hater of “pabulum-puking liberals” as a pre-Beck-and-Hannity pioneer of punditry. The Mouth’s dubious legacy and his many off-camera complications are examined with a coarse affection of which he himself would surely approve.
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