Mayor Pete

Name: Mayor Pete
Genre: Documentary
Released: November 12, 2021
Duration: 96 min
Rating: 63
Cast: Chasten Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg

2021

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Overwhelming dislike based on 17 Ratings

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1.8

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1.8	User Score Overwhelming dislike based on 17 Ratings

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Mayor Pete

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Movie Details & Credits

Amazon Prime Video | Release Date (Streaming): November 12, 2021 | R

Starring: Chasten Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg

Summary: Mayor Pete brings viewers inside Pete’s campaign to be the youngest U.S. President, providing an unprecedented intimacy with the candidate, his husband Chasten, and their ambitious team. From the earliest days of the campaign, to his unlikely, triumphant victory in Iowa and beyond. This film reveals what really goes on inside a campaign forMayor Pete brings viewers inside Pete’s campaign to be the youngest U.S. President, providing an unprecedented intimacy with the candidate, his husband Chasten, and their ambitious team. From the earliest days of the campaign, to his unlikely, triumphant victory in Iowa and beyond. This film reveals what really goes on inside a campaign for the highest office in the land - and the myriad ways it changes the lives of those at its center. Recently appointed to U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg serves as the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member in U.S. history.… Expand

Director: Jesse Moss

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: R

Runtime: 96 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Owen Gleiberman

Nov 13, 2021

Mayor Pete shows us the trial by fire of it all, and also the jubilant grind. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Nov 11, 2021

It provides unvarnished behind-the-scenes access to a presidential campaign, showing aspects of the process that we would never see otherwise. Read full review

Rex Reed

Nov 16, 2021

As the focus of Mayor Pete, a fascinating chronicle of his 2019-2020 campaign, he’s living proof that decency, integrity, and liberty and justice for all still work in American politics. His story is like a good book you just can’t put down for fear that you might miss something. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Nick Allen

Nov 12, 2021

Mayor Pete has a compelling subject, but it's most gripping when it’s trying to secure your curiosity, not just your future vote. Read full review

Gary Goldstein

Nov 11, 2021

Involving as the film is, it is decidedly short on propulsion and significant conflict. Read full review

Elizabeth Weitzman

Oct 16, 2021

It’s an enjoyable ride with intermittently compelling moments, particularly when Buttigieg struggles to find the balance between innate personality, intellectual morality, and professional practicality. But the film simply doesn’t dig deep enough. Read full review

Pat Brown

Nov 8, 2021

The film’s approach is completely subsumed by the importance of the Mayor Pete persona as the means and ends of the candidacy. Read full review

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User Reviews

coloradosnowman

Nov 16, 2021

Terrible editing, bad sound, and boring characters. This dumpster fire of a movie never should have been made.

6 of 6 users found this helpful60

1infantry23

Nov 18, 2021

Isn’t it great when politicians can pay to have their own documentaries made and make their image and how they want world to see them. Go to work fruity

6 of 6 users found this helpful60

MrJPrime

Dec 7, 2021

You do realize in making these things you're annoying half the country. Divisive nonsense. Also poorly made and cringe the whole time of you can even try to watch it.

6 of 6 users found this helpful60

Trumby

Nov 14, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This documentary solely exists to force this obviously empty vessel of a human being into the public sphere, despite having a constituency of 100,000 people and a fanbase of even fewer. Because the Democratic establishment, and the billionaires who peddle influence with them, need a young face they can use to sell neoliberal "solutions" to the problems they cause for the American working class for the remaining 30-50 years the Earth will be able to sustain our presence as a species.

I will acknowledge that declaring this as a statement of fact sounds like a crazy conspiracy. Mostly because if you've seen the movie, you probably noticed that there's pretty much no point within it where Mayor Butt actually seems like he has any positive qualities to him. Or really any feelings at all, besides the visible anger on his little rat-toothed Howdy Doody face every time he's forced to listen to a black person explain to him that he isn't entitled to their vote just because he has a "(D)" next to his name and CNN likes him. Of course, if you're a billionaire yourself, or one of those freaks who likes Peter Paul Montgomery "Little Lord Fauntleroy" Buttigieg, I'm sure the idea of a politician actually having to EARN people's votes by actually instituting policy that benefits people has you making the same face that he did in the movie.

But what this lacks in any examples of actual humanity from Pete, it more than makes up for with him explicitly saying he's gay once every 3 minutes. I'm sure most reactionaries see this as Amazon "shoving Pete's sexuality down our throats", but I actually appreciated the constant reminders, because you clearly wouldn't know it otherwise. Pete tells more stories about hating being gay as a kid and how he wished he was straight, than he does any actual positive stories about being gay. There is a real scene that they left in this film where Pete trying to weasel an explanation to his husband Chasten about why Pete is the only one in a pre-primary-debate interview who doesn't have his spouse with him on stage. I am 1000% convinced that the only reason Mayor Pete claims that he's now currently happy with being gay is because it puts him into at least one category or marginalized group, which improves his image with a sizable chunk of liberal voters.

If you're considering watching this movie and are curious of how politically accurate it is, then you're in for a disappointment. We have duplicitously edited clips and statements that falsely imply Pete Buttigieg had more grassroots fundraising, while showing a clip of him having the most money raised IN TOTAL, both from actual human beings and from faceless corporations making an investment in the future of politics). We have zero mention of Shadow or any of the conspicuous vote-counting methods of the 2020 Iowa primary that Pete prematurely declared himself the winner of. You remember that one, it was the event where the casting of delegates eventually devolved into deciding votes based on coin flip, where the coins were allowed to be flipped by Buttigieg staffers, leading to situations like the video evidence of one staffer who very clearly hid the coin face from people after picking up the coin, as he called that it was a vote for Pete. The movie even used the exact same nameless "Trump supporter" for two different scenes in two different states, half an hour apart from each other. In the first scene, he's conveniently the only conservative person at an Indiana Pete rally, with a clearly visible "PRESS" badge, and then gets verbally owned by a Santa Claus looking Pete supporter preaching tolerance. In the second scene, he's followed Pete on the campaign trail and is just standing in the middle of the street holding up a Trump flag, dressed completely the same as the first scene. If you do decide to watch the movie, keep in eye out for one scene in which another right-winger is holding up an anti-gay sign on the side of the road and yelling at traffic. If you watch closely, he's looking above the camera when the scene starts, and then turns to the road before he starts doing his thing, because this is obviously just a re-enactment, if not outright fabrication, of events.

Ultimately, this review is useless, because the consent manufacturing machine will turn this into a success no matter how substandard of a product it is. I watched this movie two days ago, and meant to write this review right after, and as I'm typing this now, I can already see the critic review score has jumped up two points. Not much, considering how low it was now, but given how disgustingly blatant the attempts at propaganda are, I wouldn't be surprised if Pete's handlers personally called Variety and explicitly told them "give the movie an 80 so the Metascore box for the movie will be green instead of yellow."

Also, Chasten deserves so much better than Pete.… Expand

7 of 7 users found this helpful70

CynicalAbe

Nov 12, 2021

if you like pete then you'll like this movie and if you don't like pete you won't like this movie... almost as if it's just a fluff movie trying to sell pete for the next election...

8 of 9 users found this helpful81

thedaarkbatty

Nov 14, 2021

Pete Buttigieg is a CIA asset shill who coordinated with the DNC and Joe Biden to take down Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential race. F him.

7 of 12 users found this helpful75

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