Mad as Hell | |
---|---|
Directed by | Andrew Napier |
Produced by | Andrew Napier |
Written by | Andrew Napier |
Starring | Cenk Uygur Ana Kasparian Ben Mankiewicz John Iadarola |
Release date
|
April 7, 2015 (DVD) |
Running time
|
82 minutes |
Country | USA |
Language | English |
Mad as Hell is a 2014 documentary film about the web series The Young Turks. The film's title refers to a famous line uttered by the character Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
The film details how Cenk Uygur created the successful web series The Young Turks.
The film was funded via Indiegogo. It raised $69,423, which was 116% of its $60,000 goal.
It was released on DVD in the USA on April 7, 2015.
It has received mostly negative reviews from critics, and has a score of 52% on Metacritic and 30% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Writing for Roger Ebert.com, Godfrey Cheshire awarded it a score of 3 out of four stars, saying that Uygur's "pioneering efforts certainly remind us how controlled most “news” in this country is, and how much alternatives to them are needed."
The Hollywood Reporter was more negative, saying "Mad as Hell is far too subjective to take seriously."
The Wrap also awarded the film a negative review, saying "“Mad as Hell” will probably REWARD fans of Uygur and The Young Turks, but much like the clips we see of Uygur in his full-flowering arm-waving wrath, it’s just sound and fury signifying very, very little."
Slant Magazine awarded it 2 and a half out of four stars, and was critical of how the film focused primarily on Uygur rather than current media practices, saying "Yet instead of using Uygur as a means to further an investigation into current media practices, Napier is ultimately too enamored with the man and his convictions that the film hews more closely to being a conventional and one-sided biographical portrait." We Got This Covered made a similar criticism, saying "Mad As Hell is a rare opportunity to use the life story of Cenk Uygur to say something about the modern media culture, but instead, it’s kind of about the awesomeness of Uygur, how he put together his Ocean’s 11 like team of media upstarts and rocked the so-called squares in their ivory tower, despite the fact that the man leading the revolution longed to have a corner office in one of those very same towers." They awarded it three out of five stars.