- Featuring
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Joe Crowley
- Director
- Rachel Lears
- Rating
- TV-PG
- Running Time
- 86 minutes
- Release Date
- May 1st, 2019
Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
Knock Down The House is the dictionary definition of a crowd-pleaser – this film, for years to come, will surely be one the first to come to mind when thinking of films that audiences are truly passionate about. It is certainly deserving of the attention it will get, but could use some improvement in terms of its storytelling.
The subjects of the film are truly awesome women, and there’s no denying that. Seeing their stories come into fruition, and seeing them find success is quite empowering. On that merit alone, the filmmakers absolutely do their job. The women at the center of this story do mean well, and want to see their towns do well – and it’s certainly easy to become emotionally invested with the politicians chronicled here.
As easy as Knock Down The House is to recommend, and as inevitable the continuous universal acclaim for this film has been, the film could’ve delved into these women’s stories a little bit deeper. The film tells it’s four stories in a very one-sided way – we don’t exactly get any other points of view, nor do we get very deep with the backgrounds of the politicians at the forefront.
In the end, we just see these women succeed, and have the film tell us how great they are without the audience exactly getting to know them.
*still courtesy of Netflix*
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