Introduction: Ruthless and Pointless
If you ever wanted to sit through a movie that feels like a never-ending argument between two bumper stickers, Citizen Ruth has you covered. Alexander Payne’s 1996 directorial debut aims for sharp satire about abortion politics, but instead delivers a joyless, meandering, one-joke premise stretched across 100 minutes of smug performances and plot loops. The real tragedy? Laura Dern giving it everything she’s got for a movie that hands her a script seemingly written during a late-night dorm room debate.
Plot Summary: Everyone Is Terrible, and So Are You
Laura Dern plays Ruth Stoops, a paint-huffing, utterly irresponsible drifter who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant—again—and caught in a media circus between pro-life zealots and pro-choice activists. Sounds like fertile ground for satire, right? Wrong. Citizen Ruth chooses to do absolutely nothing with it. It’s like watching a sitcom without punchlines, or a political cartoon stretched out so long that the ink runs dry halfway through.
Ruth doesn’t grow, doesn’t change, and barely seems to register what’s happening to her. That might be the point—she’s a pawn!—but Payne handles it with all the grace of a fart in church. The message seems to be that everyone on all sides is awful, and therefore, your apathy is justified. Riveting.
Laura Dern: A One-Woman Show in a Clown Parade
Let’s give Dern her due—she is fully committed here. Eyes wild, teeth clenched, she huffs glue and curses with Oscar-worthy abandon. But she’s also marooned. The character of Ruth isn’t a person; she’s a strawman in cutoffs and a tank top, used to poke holes in both pro-life and pro-choice camps with the cinematic equivalent of a pool noodle.
By the end of the film, Ruth is the same delinquent she was at the beginning. No wisdom gained. No catharsis earned. It’s a satire that dares to say… absolutely nothing.
The Supporting Cast: A Carnival of Caricatures
The movie fills its frame with one-note characters straight out of a political cartoonist’s reject pile. On the “Baby Savesies” side, you’ve got the Stoney family—holy rollers with big hair, big smiles, and brains the size of Tic Tacs. They welcome Ruth into their home with the kind of forced cheer you usually only see in hostage videos.
On the pro-choice side, you’ve got liberal activists who are just as manipulative, smug, and self-righteous. There’s even a scene where they film a fake PSA with Ruth as their unwilling mascot. Bravo, satire! You’ve discovered that people are hypocrites. What an original take!
Satire So Broad, It Can’t Fit Through the Door
Payne thinks he’s making Dr. Strangelove for abortion, but really, he’s just making Ruth Stoops and the Cartoon Extremists. The satire is so blunt it might as well have been written on a bar napkin with a crayon. Every character is a mouthpiece. Every scene is a lecture. Every joke is too afraid to actually offend anyone.
You know your satire is limp when it spends the whole runtime trying to say “both sides are bad!” and somehow manages to make you not care about either.
Cinematography and Direction: Made-for-TV Energy
Visually, the film looks like a long-lost TV movie from 1989. There’s nothing wrong with being low-budget, but this feels like someone accidentally set the camera to “uninspired.” Scenes drag. The pacing is flatter than Kansas. And the direction seems to shout, “Let’s just get through this before lunch.”
There are no standout shots. No memorable sequences. Just scenes strung together with the urgency of a DMV clerk.
The Message: If You Think Everyone’s Awful, Congratulations
There’s a time and place for films that examine the hypocrisy of activism and the complexity of abortion debates. Citizen Ruth, unfortunately, chooses the lazy route: lampoon both sides equally, don’t bother saying anything new, and wrap it all up with a snide grin.
It wants to be bold and provocative, but it chickens out every time it gets close to actual commentary. It’s not “brave.” It’s just chicken satay on a stick of irony.
Conclusion: Abort Mission
In the end, Citizen Ruth is a film that mistakes cynicism for insight. It could’ve been a biting satire about the exploitation of women in political movements. Instead, it settles for tired caricatures, repetitive gags, and a protagonist so irredeemable you start rooting for a tornado to sweep her and the entire cast off the map.
The only citizen in need of saving is the poor viewer trapped in this tedious think-piece masquerading as a movie.
Final Verdict: 1 out of 5 Glue Cans – and that’s just for Laura Dern’s commitment to the bit.
