It’s been nearly two months since Morgan Neville’s amusing and thoroughly superficial Lorne, in which the Oscar-winning documentarian tried and failed to get the Saturday Night Live creator to let down his guard. So I guess we were overdue for a new Saturday Night Live-based documentary.

Josh Greenbaum’s Playing POTUS isn’t exactly a Saturday Night Live-based documentary — not in the way the various SNL50 docs or films focusing on high-profile SNL alums like Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy were Saturday Night Live-based documentaries. But for all of its ostensible focus on a wide variety of comic impressions and impersonations of presidents, I’d estimate that at least 75 percent of the documentary’s 93-minute running time is dedicated to Saturday Night Live.

As Playing POTUS: SNL’s 50 Years of Presidents, this vague adaptation of Peter Funt’s book titled Playing POTUS: The Power of America’s ‘Acting Presidents’ is fine. It’s missing some key interview subjects and dodges or entirely misses some key topics, but when you have talent as clever and enthusiastic as Dana Carvey, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon and Darrell Hammond, you’re bound to find some insights and ample entertainment.

However, as Playing POTUS: Not Just SNL, it’s barely functional, to a degree of near pointlessness. The failure to analyze or even acknowledge countless comic interpretations of presidents in contexts that lack Lorne Michaels is so thoroughly bizarre that the entire documentary becomes more head-scratching than enlightening. Though like Neville’s Lorne, it’s at least an entertaining trifle.

The frustrating thing about Playing POTUS is that it starts off reasonably promising, using John F. Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader, whose comedy record The First Family is one of the strangest winners of the Grammy for album of the year. It isn’t deep historical context, but it’s absolutely historical context, followed by a swift jog through the Smothers Brothers and…that’s pretty much it for comic presidential impersonations before Saturday Night Live.

The meat of the documentary is the different SNL presidents talking about their individual impressions, their origins and their causally unprovable impacts on the perception of those presidents.

This is the best part of the documentary, whether it’s Chevy Chase cackling at the possibility that he might have contributed to Gerald Ford’s speedy electoral defeat; Dana Carvey talking (for possibly the millionth time) about how he was so stymied by George Bush that he cobbled together a character who often had nothing at all to do with its source; Alec Baldwin reading both negative tweets from Donald Trump and, proudly, his own responses; or Kate McKinnon getting emotional still talking about her version of Hillary Clinton and Hillary’s 2016 defeat.

Greenbaum and his subjects are willing to acknowledge some of the less successful impressions over the years — “Of all the presidents who have ever been on SNL, I think I was my least favorite” Will Forte says of following Will Ferrell as George Bush Junior — as well as the lengthy struggles to find an appropriate Obama or Joe Biden.

With the help of a couple of experts, Playing POTUS does well with explaining how frequently SNL‘s impressions have achieved a level of hyper-reality, in which the heightened Xerox supplants the actual historical figure in the collective consciousness. In that light, though, it’s strange not to dedicate a single second to then-candidate Donald Trump’s appearance hosting Saturday Night Live.

Although the documentary suffers a little from the absence of Tina Fey as part of a lengthy segment on her Sarah Palin impression and its effect on the 2008 election, that probably should have made Greenbaum realize that not only was Palin never elected POTUS (nor was Hillary Clinton, it should be added), she wasn’t elected veep either. Playing POTUS also covers Maya Rudolph’s impression of Kamala Harris, who doesn’t technically align with the title. Perhaps that all could have been 15 minutes redistributed into non-SNL terrain.

Keegan-Michael Key is great discussing the origins of Luther, Obama’s anger translator. Rich Little is present to discuss general impressions. Seth Meyers is part of a decent segment on the history of presidential roasting at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

But if the topic is meant to be broad, it’s head-scratching to ignore The Simpsons, South Park and any movie that took a comic approach to a specifically named president — Dick, W., Vice, etc. In this film’s universe, In Living Color apparently never existed, nor did Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s That’s My Bush!, a multi-cam sitcom about George W. Bush and his family. Mad TV is mentioned only nebulously, though full credit to Will Sasso, the only talking head in the documentary capable of expressing regret at how much and how wrongly Monica Lewinsky was lampooned in conjunction with Bill Clinton.

There’s something astonishingly and instantly dated about how thoroughly Greenbaum misses the way new media has and continues to approach Donald Trump. Sarah Cooper may have been a flash-in-the-pan, but if you can’t find something substantive to say about how a multi-racial woman became a fleeting sensation lip-synching Donald Trump, you’re not trying very hard.

Instead, Greenbaum, who did far better and smarter work with many of the same people in Too Funny to Fail and Will & Harper, wastes time on a voiceover device that’s too cutesy to be worth the effort and a three-act structure that’s more for the benefit of his editors than the audience. It all results in a potentially meaningful documentary that isn’t bad, just lacking.

The reviews are in for Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi flick Disclosure Day – and so far the consensus is that the great director has delivered another worthy addition to his canon of alien movies.

The film – which is released in UK cinemas today – currently boasts a score of 85 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes after 137 reviews, while its score on fellow review aggregator is 74 based on 47 reviews.

While those scores are a little lower than his previous two movies The Fabelmans (92 per cent on RT and 85 on Metacritic) and West Side Story (91 per cent on RT and 85 on Metacritic), it still indicates that the vast majority of critics were broadly on board with new movies.

Radio Times gave a mixed 3 star review in the film, praising the iconic filmmaker for injecting some of his classic awe-inspiring moments into the movie that “highlight why for so long Spielberg has been considered the unimpeachable king of entertaining big-budget filmmaking”.

We also gave a positive verdict on the performances – particularly from Emily Blunt – but remarked that the screenplay from regular Spielberg collaborator David Koepp “has a clunky and unfocused quality that occasionally makes it difficult to truly fall under the film’s spell”.

Elsewhere, the film received 4-star reviews from The Guardian, The Independent, The Evening Standard and Empire Magazine, while on the other end of the spectrum there were 2-star verdicts from The Times, The Telegraph, Little White Lies and BBC.

Meanwhile, the film perhaps received more glowing praise across the pond, with top marks from RogerEbert.com and positive write-ups in The Atlantic, IndieWire, Vulture and The Hollywood Reporter.

Disclosure Day stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo and Colin Firth, with the synopsis reading: “As a massive government conspiracy unravels, a targeted whistleblower races against time to bring about the extraordinary event that will change human history forever: the day of ultimate alien disclosure.”

Disclosure Day is released in cinemas on Wednesday 10 June 2026.

Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.

Film Reviews

I Love Boosters
Director: Boots Riley
Neon, Focus Features, Universal Pictures
In Theaters: 05.22.2026

Recent times have shown us the impending horrors of late-stage capitalism. Quite the statement to start with.
Well… knowing this audience, this is an obvious statement. One could go on and on about how much this system has taken from people and easily become lost in the chaos. However, Boots Riley’s newest movie chooses to embrace chaos — a colorful and absurd chaos, that is. I Love Boosters is an afro-surrealist dreamscape that interrogates the hypocrisies and contradictions of capitalism while highlighting the importance of community, action and especially disruption. The film designs a new look for the revolution that shocks and inspires the audience to take action.

Keke Palmer (One of Them Days, Akeelah and the Bee) stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer and leader of the booster team, The Velvet Gang, a group that shoplifts high-end clothes and sells them at a discount price. Corvette works alongside her two friends, Sade (Naomi Ackie, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Mickey 17) and Mariah (Taylour Paige, The Toxic Avenger, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F) as they try to make ends meet. When Corvette discovers that designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore, St. Elmo’s Fire, The Substance) stole the design she had submitted for a contest, she targets Metro Design, Smith’s fashion chain. In the midst of their plan, they meet and team up with Jianhu (Poppy Liu, Hacks, Dog Man), a Chinese factory worker protesting the poor working conditions of Christie Smith’s factories. Things get even more insane when they discover that Jianhu has a teleporter — and uses it in their heists to rob stores, leading viewers to discover more about the device.

Those expecting a typical narrative about revolution and taking down the system won’t find that here. Rather, I Love Boosters tries to be a revolution in its own way against Hollywood and the looming dread of the AI bubble through its storytelling and filmmaking. Riley takes full advantage of this medium and builds a world that is bursting with color and off-the-wall visuals — like the Smith’s slanted building or the crazy costumes worn by The Velvet Gang. He even goes as far as calling back to classic films like Jason and the Argonauts, with a live-action/stop-motion hybrid sequence that brings joy to anyone who wants tactile-ness back in movies.

Riley also forgoes any semblance of subtlety, but still manages to pack so much substance into the film. Of course, the visual gags can be peeled back to reveal deeply harsh truths about our world. Mariah’s hilarious trick to lighten her skin by holding her breath speaks volumes about the exhaustion black people deal with when code-switching. Or take the entire dissertation we get mid-way through the film about dialectical materialism, essentially telling the audience that Karl Marx is required reading for a workers’ revolution.
The film also acknowledges the messiness that comes with organizing and how acceleration is necessary for meaningful change. This goes without even diving into the uniquely black aspects of the film. The parts that speak specifically to the ones who lead the way in times of revolution and the roadblocks they face, from the appropriation of their art to the exploitation of their labor.
By focusing on the fashion industry, Riley dissects classism and elitism that exists in the space that is meant to celebrate human expression. The film basically states that those at the top are the artists, while everyone else is the art. In other words, those at the top shape the world into what they want it to be. But in truth, everyone wants to be an artist and put some of themselves into the world. When we do that, we can undoubtedly create a more equitable society.

Praise should also be given to the actors in this film. The leading ladies disappear into their roles, while bringing a level of charm and energy to every scene that makes you believe in their friendship. Of course, Paige steals the show in every scene she is in with her endearing performance that brings out the best in Palmer and Ackie. Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Iron Man 2) and Will Poulter (We’re the Millers, Midsommar) were also standouts. Cheadle, as the pyramid-schemer Dr. Jack, gives a great performance through layers of make-up and Poulter steals the show in every scene he is in as the uptight, petty Metro Designs branch manager Grayson.

While I praised the film for exploring so many meaningful aspects of revolution and actualization, you could still feel how busy this film truly is, which left certain ideas feeling underdeveloped. LaKeith Stanfield’s (Knives Out, Sorry to Bother You) character touches on the idea that men often steal women’s ambitions and souls to fulfill their own needs. While this did give us quite a memorable scene, his presence felt tacked on. Also, with so much happening in the movie, there were moments where the story felt like it was lost. Nonetheless, Riley manages to bring it all together in the end.

Once again delivering a scathing criticism of capitalism that is equal parts hilarious and optimistic, Riley’s approach to storytelling oozes with unconventionality, and through it he creates imaginative visuals that both shock and impress you. At the end of the day, I Love Boosters is a celebration of collective action that reminds us just how interconnected our issues are. —Angela Garcia

Read more film reviews by Angela Garcia:
Film Review: You, Me & Tuscany
Last Call for Secondhand Screenings!

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