Anti-Hillary Clinton film breaks into top five at doc box office

Dinesh D'Souza's Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party earns $25,000 per screen

Days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, a documentary slamming the party and its soon-to-be presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is doing strong business.

Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party opened in third place among documentaries at the box office over the weekend, taking in $74,814, according to audience measurement firm Rentrak.

Conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza directed the movie, which played on only three screens. Its per screen average of $24,938 was far and away the highest of any nonfiction film in theaters.

Nearly two hours of poisonous bluster...

     --From Peter Sobczynski's review of Hillary's America by Dinesh D'Souza

Despite its box office success, the film has not been received enthusiastically by most critics.

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Writing for RogerEbert.com, Peter Sobczynski called the film "cinematically inept." He added, “Hillary’s America may well be the single dumbest documentary that I have ever seen in my life—nearly two hours of poisonous bluster and anti-historical rhetoric that comes across like the desperate ravings of someone trying to make a few more bucks by rehashing the same nonsense before his gravy train finally leaves town."

Owen Gleiberman writing in Variety proved no more admiring:  "It sometimes seems as if Hillary’s America is all an elaborate joke, and that D’Souza doesn’t actually believe the outlandish attack-job theories he’s peddling."

​The film has attracted a mere 14-percent approval rating on rottentomatoes.com. However, it has earned some praise from conservative outlets, including the National Review. NR Online's John Fund wrote, "Hillary's America takes a two-by-four to the racist, greedy, and callous episodes in the Democratic party’s past."

Director Dinesh D'Souza in a scene from "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party." From D'Souza Media

Fund added, "Hillary’s America won’t change long-settled opinions about Hillary, but it will probably raise doubts in the minds of independent voters who see it."

Lest Hillary Clinton supporters panic at that thought, consider this: D'Souza's 2012 documentary 2016: Obama's America, which excoriated Pres. Obama, failed to prevent his re-election.

D'Souza, by the way, pleaded guilty in 2014 to making illegal political campaign violations; he accuses the Obama Administration of cooking up the charges in retaliation for his anti-Obama film.

Elsewhere at the doc box office, it was another number one finish for A Beautiful Planet, the IMAX space documentary narrated by Jennifer Lawrence. The film produced in conjunction with NASA has now made a total of $3,736,119 in 12 weeks of release, per Rentrak.

Morgan Neville's documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble came in second among documentaries, pushing its six-week total to $759,830.

Fourth place went to Tickled, a documentary by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve that investigates the mystery surrounding a "competitive tickling" subculture. After five weeks in theaters the film has earned just shy of $400,000.

In fifth place came Eat That Question, the documentary about the late musician Frank Zappa. Thorsten Schütte's film has now made a total of $168,805.

The late Frank Zappa and cat. Image courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

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