Join or Sign In
Sign in to customize your TV listings
By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.
Shoddy comedy with a potentially funny premise. It is 1998. Chet Roosevelt (great-grandson of Franklin) is President. The US government runs out of money, and the President is forced to hold an international telethon to raise enough money to bail out the most powerful nation in the free world. Sounds like it could be funny? It isn't. The film is ruined by a lousy cast; episodic subplots involving a White House aide, Willard, who conspires with an Arab-Jewish terrorist organization (the Hebrabs--Hebrew/Arabs. Get it? Ha, ha.) to overthrow the ailing government; and a production company that was more interested in selling soundtrack albums than making a decent comedy. (The casting of rock stars Costello and Meat Loaf was supposed to sell records. It didn't.) The whole thing was a misguided attempt by some Hollywood executives to pander to a mindless teenage audience. As it turned out, the teenage audience wasn't all that mindless. They stayed away in droves, and the movie bombed.