

Preaching to the choir, and quoting from the choir -- D'Souza's interviewees include conservative think-tankers, commentators and academics -- the film asks the question "If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?," then posits some disturbing answers. Disturbing, but dubious.

D'Souza stars in, narrates and conducts the interviews (some via cellphone) in "2016," which expands on the controversial premise of his book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage," and a 2010 Forbes article, "How Obama Thinks." Basically, D'Souza -- who opens with a genial checklist of similarities between himself and the president (age, mixed-race heritage, Ivy League education) -- suggests that Obama is running the country based on the radical geopolitical tenets laid down by his Kenyan father in the 1960s, a father Obama hardly knew.

Here's how D'Souza, an Indian-American evangelical Christian who introduces himself in the film as "a writer, speaker, thinker," concluded his Forbes piece: "Our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.




In a sit-down with NYU psychologist Paul Vitz, D'Souza hears the professor's thoughts on absent fathers and how they can shape the psyche and thinking of their sons. He goes from there to paint a picture of a world where the nations of the Middle East -- including Libya, Syria and Iran -- band into "the United States of Islam," threatening the security of the United States and the world. The film, co-directed by D'Souza and John Sullivan (who produced Ben Stein's 2008 doc about creationism), deploys an animated graphic similar to the creeping-Communism maps of Southeast Asia that were used to justify the war in Vietnam.



The documentary isn't all theory and conjecture. An interview with David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general from 1998 to 2008, presents a sobering picture of the national debt and what it might portend for our future. Author and commentator Shelby Steele makes some provocative, pointed observations about the role race played in Obama's election. And footage of a town hall-style meeting in which the president fumbles -- and fumbles, and fumbles -- in his attempt to explain the economic benefits of his Affordable Care Act should warm the hearts of Obamacare foes.


Director: Dinesh D'Souza and John Sullivan

Rated: PG

Running time: 89 minutes.