Down on his luck and out one night at his local Bronx watering hole, Louis Ortiz, an unemployed Puerto Rican father from the Bronx, is told for the hundredth time that he looks like then-candidate Barack Obama. Luckily, the person making this observation inspires him to seek out a new career and thus Ortiz becomes “Bronx Obama.” Intimately captured by filmmaker Ryan Murdock, Bronx Obama is an insightful day-in-the-life look at a group of political celebrity impersonators.
Filmed over the course of two years, Murdock’s film finds its footing on the road as Ortiz is put in compromising positions, playing to rooms for both Obama supporters and detractors. Initially he’s uncomfortable with the kind of humor expected at Freedom Fest, a Libertarian-leaning event attended by Ron Paul supporters. Sharing hotel rooms with equally-as-unlikely impersonators, we learn the other men were originally from humble roots, including his friendly rival (Mike Cote) a Mitt Romney look-a-like whose far from the polished MBA/Wall Street type, rather, he’s a drywall installer from Maine. Tim Watters, a famed Bill Clinton impersonator (who unfortunately hasn’t lost weight at the same rate as our previous president) takes Cote and Ortiz under his wing as Ortiz struggles to nail Obama’s accent and cadence — the Bronx can still be heard in his voice. Angering short-fused Dustin Gold (who could have a career as a Ti West impersonator), a political comedy producer who writes and directs his performers to the client’s ideology, Murdock portrays instances where Ortiz is perhaps in over his head.
This is all an absurd business to be in and Murdock walks a fine line. Occasionally a member of the public will speak to the “candidates” as if they were the real thing, and Dustin’s advice is to not get friendly, get their vote and move on. The economy of this absurd profession and the political discomfort is causes as Ortiz is forced to play into racist stereotypes is touched upon briefly. As the pressure gets to him, he Skypes is daughter Reina, living with relatives down south.
A character study above all, Bronx Obama is entertaining and straightforward while playing it safe, the sort of thing Ortiz, Cote and Watters are expected to do on stage. As a conversation on race and identity, the film is quite effective although the conversation is bound to take place off-screen at film festival Q&A’s and classrooms. Murdocks’s mostly cinema verite approach limits the extent to which self-reflection takes place — the focus is rather on the task (or the joke) at hand. Engaging and sympathetic, Ortiz plays Obama above all to provide for his family, injecting our man with heart. Unfortunately in the process we learn too little about the other impersonators who must also have interesting stories. While certain story arcs aren’t pursued and developed as well as the should be, including some moments on the road, the film gets by because Ortiz is an engaging and sympathetic character as we watch his preparation and transformation.
Bronx Obama will hit VOD on October 7th.