The popular “show within a show” trope has crash-landed in an entirely new genre of film. Save your Rogers: The Musical, your Eleanor! The Eleanor Roosevelt Story starring Meryl Streep. Here comes Rudy!, a completely horrendous, entirely unnecessary Broadway musical about, you guessed it, Rudy Giuliani. Even worse: It resides within an entire documentary about the cursed man.
To be honest, it was hard to imagine what Rudy! A Documusical might look like before it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week. What exactly is a “documusical?” In this instance, it’s a cut-and-dry documentary about Rudy Giuliani, with the occasional shift into opera overdrive. As you learn about Giuliani, the film will cut over to a staged version of the politician’s life, with tunes that track his rise and fall.
The purpose of this is as flimsy as the three hairs left atop Giuliani’s sweaty scalp: the man liked operas. Perhaps there’d be something more symbolic about it—the epic tragedies, a monolithic tale of failure, the hero’s journey—if we had a leading man that we could empathize with in any way, shape, or form. But no. It is impossible to empathize with Rudy Giuliani. I wonder why.
Still, try as he might, filmmaker Jed Rothstein gives as much rudy-mentary background on the public figure as possible to clear Giuliani’s name just a bit. The events following 9/11 help; the massive numbers of new racist cops hired under his reign hinder. We get a thorough history of Giuliani from his friends, the journalists who’ve covered him since his time in the DA’s office, his staff, etc.
For any folks uninformed about Giuliani’s rise in the New York political landscape, Rudy! A Documusical gives a breezy run-through of his tumultuous times. This is probably the best aspect of the doc. Here are the early tides of Giuliani’s corruption—he cheers on a white supremacist cop mob at Gracie Mansion, an eerie parallel to the Jan. 6 riots—but, suddenly, 9/11 makes him a hero.
But pairing grave tragedies (9/11 for one, the killing of Amadou Diallo for another) with choreographed numbers delving into Rudy Giuliani’s psyche left a bad taste in my mouth. There were around five musical numbers in total, with tunes that were not catchy or even purposeful in the slightest. When the audience at the premiere laughed, it was at Giuliani’s failures, never at the “documusical” aspect of the film. If you were looking to cackle at Rudy Giuliani, you’d be able to do that with a simple “Best Of” YouTube compilation.
In a cruel twist of irony, the timing of this premiere just so happened to coincide with the first day of the Jan. 6 hearings. While being forced to relive the insurrection through Rudy Giuliani’s perspective, I couldn’t help but let my mind linger on what was happening in the real present day. Somehow, watching the Capitol riots play out all over again felt like old news, and yet, also too soon.
The ladies sitting next to me summed it up near the end of the film: “We’ve seen this,” they groaned, and walked out before the film had finished. We have seen this, and we’re still seeing this on a daily basis. The Trump/Giuliani fiasco is as uninteresting as ever as the Jan. 6 hearings continue, a constant reminder of the hellish four years we lived under their insanity. There’s no need to watch a doc about the wingbat brothers.
The most confusing (and disappointing) aspect of Rudy! A Documusical is Giuliani’s decision to steer clear of the film. He just appeared on The Masked Singer with a bone-chilling rendition of “Bad to the Bone.” This sing-songy doc, which rarely goes too harsh on the guy, is not a far cry from his three minutes of fame in that Fox reality-show monstrosity. Why couldn’t he lace up the tap shoes and continue his desperate bid to stay relevant?
Relevancy is another question. The point of the documentary is to mock Giuliani’s drive to maintain power and importance. Crafting an entirely new genre of film around the man and staging out a whole fake musical is perhaps not the best way to shut Giuliani down for good. If anything, Rudy! A Documusical proves that it’s about damn time we throw Rudy Giuliani behind bars and stop talking about him forever.
