THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT
[] (Two stars)
Old whine in a new bottle. Running time: 89 minutes. Not rated (sexual references). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.
THE sex scandal that nearly drove President Clinton from office five years ago seems so distant after 9/11 that it’s easy to forget that the impeachment was proceeded by Whitewater – an unsuccessful campaign to oust him that took place over at least five years.
What Hillary Clinton once dubbed the product of “a vast right-wing conspiracy” is covered in “The Hunting of the President,” a superficial documentary based on a best-selling book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons – which is being released just before the ex-president’s memoir hits the bookstores.
In under an hour and a half, co-directors Harry Thomason (the TV producer and longtime Friend of Bill) and Nickolas Perry (who helmed “Speedway Junky”) rehash the allegations leveled at Clinton by Arkansas state troopers, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones – as well as skimming through the so-called Whitewater scandal, which involved a complex land deal.
Though all of these allegations were publicly aired and investigated at great length – and, in the case of Whitewater, at taxpayer expense (something like $50 million) – no charges were ever brought against Clinton, who was finally impeached and acquitted by Congress after his dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky came to light, an episode that is treated as almost an epilogue here.
Though the documentary argues somewhat persuasively that the headline-hungry media was manipulated into publishing some questionable anti-Clinton stories by conservative ideologues, the directors undercut their message by throwing in cheap jokes and clips from old movies – Ã la Michael Moore – to break up the parade of talking heads.
This pretty much guarantees they are preaching to the converted – that and the fact that “The Hunting of the President” contains little that is particularly new or compelling, save an emotional interview with Whitewater principal Susan McDougal, who went to jail for refusing to cooperate with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.