Matt Walsh cares, a lot, about what critics think

I’ve never reviewed any of Walsh’s films. After his reaction to reviews - and non-reviews - of ‘Am I Racist?,’ I feel good about my decision.

I’m a critic who prides myself in having an open mind and reviewing things outside my comfort zone. This includes movies in genres outside of what I typically enjoy and, yes, sometimes, movies that I might not agree with ideologically. 

Just in the past few weeks, I’ve reviewed two different conservative-produced movies about Republican presidents, including a biopic of Ronald Reagan and a documentary arguing that Richard Nixon got a bum rap in Watergate. 

I didn’t like either — although I was much nicer about Reagan than most other critics were — but I’m on record as wishing there were a better class of movies aimed at conservative viewers. Also, I’ve given scathingly negative reviews to plenty of movies with left-liberal agendas, including the bulk of Michael Moore’s filmography, and several varieties of anti-Trump documentaries. 

But one thing I haven’t ever done is review movies from Matt Walsh, the conservative social media provocateur who, like a large percentage of people in that world, seems to have harbored long-running showbiz aspirations. 

I did not see or review The Daily Wire’s previous films, What is a Woman and Lady Ballers, mostly because I see bad-faith transphobia as crossing a bigotry line that, say, a biopic gloss on Ronald Reagan does not.

Walsh’s new film, Am I Racist?, seems to be a bit different, as it’s advertised as a riff on Sacha Baron Cohen’s work, with Walsh conducting interviews incognito and getting his intercolators to say embarrassing things on camera. It’s meant to make of some of the excesses of the post-George Floyd moment, such as Robin DiAngelo and Race2Dinner. 

There is some potential here, and Race2Dinner — a business that involved a pair of women inviting wealthy white women to dinners, and yelling at them about their racism —  was already the subject of a previous documentary, Deconstructing Karen, that likely made the perpetrators look much worse than intended (I reviewed it here).

Plus, not like Race2Dinner has never been challenged before- before the first doc, I pretty much only knew about the concept from The Cut and The Guardian making fun of it. And the Robin DiAngelo backlash has been around almost as long as White Fragility itself. 

The film has done well, although not exactly Sound of Freedom-level well. It’s been in the top ten, with single digit box office totals. 

Since the release of Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh has spent a massive amount of time railing against critics who have refused to review his movie, negatively reviewed it, or not replied to the email offering a screener of his movie. He doesn’t appear happy, in fact, with any reaction except for praise. 

I should be clear that the usual practice of conservative filmmakers is not to offer their movie to critics, and then allege a conspiracy against reviewing it. The Daily Wire, to their credit, has often mainstream critics screeners of their films, although I suspect the purpose of doing so was to get some percentage of critics to reply with various insults and vulgarities, which the outlet can then turn into content. Personally, I was offered screeners of the previous films but was not invited to review Am I Racist? 

Walsh, rather than take the “I don’t care what critics think” tack, has been seemingly obsessed with the subject. 

Sure, the film only has 13 critics reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s also at 73 percent positive, and while a I know a critics/audience split on RT is seen as one of the world’s worst possible injustices, 98/73 isn’t that far apart.