America the Beautiful

Presumably following the doc template of the pope saying Mass and bears defecating in the woods, America the Beautiful illustrates how women are pressured to meet an unhealthy standard of attractiveness. There’s nothing new in Roberts’s film about skinny models, eating disorders, plastic surgery and toxic cosmetics. According to his worldview, the media are responsible: Footage includes confessions from magazine editors and photographers, who admit to using emaciated runway drones to serve their own fiscal ends. Like Michael Moore at his most proselytizing, Roberts relies on ham-fisted rhetoric to punctuate his voiceover. And like Borat, he’s not averse to intoxicating young dudes so they make sexist remarks.