Commence watching Citizen Weiner and you might recognize the face of its subject, Zack Weiner. In a quick opening montage of Daniel Robbins’ documentary, late-night talk show hosts joking about something Weiner did, people looking shocked, and a conveniently blurred video at the center of it all. Those who can recall 2021’s New York City Council election might remember Weiner as the primary candidate who had a BDSM video of himself leaked to the press during. It’s a recent blink and you’ll miss it piece of pop-culture history, from when we were mostly inside and online, and Citizen Weiner doesn’t do much to make this part of the past worth revisiting.
A few interviews at the top provide some background. Weiner is a writer and actor who starred in Robbins’ previous movies, including 2018’s Pledge which Weiner co-wrote. With their careers on pause during the pandemic, they pivot to local politics with plans to document it all from start to finish. If their connections to show business don’t make it clear enough, their forced comedic deliveries will; this whole campaign is a joke set up front to back by two guys who aren’t running for office so much as they’re building an extended universe around themselves, and everything including the eventual video leak is engineered for maximum attention in service of this mock-documentary.
It’s not exactly an original idea; more recent examples include 2019’s Mister America (which was part of On Cinema), but where that movie had two full seasons as context and hundreds of hours already invested in character-building with these subjects, none of them have any advantage here outside what viewers might remember from reading about this story in the news or being present for parts like “the election” or “when all those articles came out.” The rest of the campaign staff does half-assed smarmy improvisation that goes nowhere; take “Campaign Security” Aaron, who shows up to introduce himself as an eccentric, then fades into the background. The only cast member who seems to have the right idea is their Communications Director Sarah Coffey, a self-described TikToker who has a better balance of charisma and unseriousness than anyone around her.
As the film and campaign press on toward primary day, it becomes clear that these people are just as bad at campaigning as they are at pulling off this movie. They’re so bad at it that when their manufactured video leaks nothing happens. A shocked Weiner drops his facade along with his campaign, and it’s only after someone from their team sends a mass email about the video to literally everyone who works at the New York Post that any reporter bites which is a problem for two reasons: One, feigned incompetence isn’t all that interesting when it’s overshadowed by actual incompetence; two (and this is just me) if you send anything that starts with “Leaked footage of City Council candidate” in an email anywhere near my inbox, I’m clicking on it no matter what time I got up this morning. But hey, Weiner gets his 15 minutes in the end. That counts for something.
The most disappointing thing about Citizen Weiner is that it lacks a point. It wants nothing more than to achieve virality, and it shows. Many movies have done this well before finding comic absurdity in the world of politics but Citizen Weiner does not do much beyond watching people attempt a sub sub Nathan Fielder routine. (It’s worth noting that two of the most interesting characters, besides Weiner, are his mother and their campaign lawyer, who seem to be themselves.) The problem with the Weiner campaign’s good deeds (trying to raise money for a retired election worker’s kidney transplant, for instance) is that they come off as attempts to justify their light duping of the public. An opening title card quoting Harvey Milk’s “Politics is theater” suggests that Citizen Weiner wants to show us what’s fake about the political realm, instead we get performers who can’t go about business as usual seizing the stage of politics while they wait to get back to work. If you’re going to put on a show this big, at least make it good.
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