JIM TREACHER: The Final Act of ‘The Final Year’ Is the Best Comedy of 2018.

After the first hour or so, I was about ready to demand my 99 cents back. Jeff Bezos may be made of money, but I’m not.

But then, in the blink of an eye, the entire tone of the film changed. In an instant, it became much, much less difficult to watch. Suddenly, all the arrogance and pomposity of the previous 72 minutes was worth it. Suddenly, I was laughing out loud and clapping.

Why?

November 8, 2016.

You may have seen the following meme-worthy moment from the film, in which the documentarians stick a camera in Ben Rhodes’ face after he’s just gotten the final election results. We see his every twitch and nuance as he haltingly expresses his feelings about being so completely wrong.*

SPOILER: It is wonderful.

As George C. Scott’s Patton famously warned at the conclusion of the movie, “For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph — a tumultuous parade…Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

In the last 50 years, that person has been the documentary filmmaker, as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Chuck Berry all discovered the hard way. Or as Kyle Smith wrote in his review of The September Issue, the 2009 look back at Vogue and the sneering pomposity of its editor, Anna Wintour just before the dead tree publishing industry hit the big iceberg, the magic of the documentary is simple: “Convince somebody that you’re going to make them a big-screen star, then let them hang themselves.” Except that with The Final Year, both its stars and its director were absolutely certain how their movie was going to end. But in the end, Ben Rhodes built an echo chamber too far.