“January 6: The Most Deadliest Day”: Unfunny and Blunted Satire

The Babylon Bee is a Christian conservative satire website. You may have seen their stuff shared on social media or you are a regular reader. Some of their stuff is genuinely funny, particularly their skewering of televangelist Joel Osteen and their ribbing of Calvinists. The quality of their jokes overall, however, is of a lesser pedigree compared to the seminal The Onion or the punk-rock-themed The Hard Times.

The Babylon Bee has now branched out into feature-length filmmaking. Their mock documentary January 6: The Most Deadliest Day is Borat-meets-The Daily Show, but more pandering in its approach. Its main target of mockery is hyperbolic, overly emotional progressives, and they certainly deserve such ridicule. For example, the film begins by comparing the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob in 2021 to the atomic bombings of Japan. The filmmakers, however, are too easy on Donald Trump, also deserving of ridicule, to the point of partisanship. This defangs the film’s satirical bite.

January 6: The Most Deadliest Day is hosted by a journalist character named Garth Strudelfudd (Kyle Mann, The Babylon Bee’s Editor in Chief). He “interviews” such partisans such as Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire and radio host Dennis Prager who offer nothing except to service the conservative fanbase of The Babylon Bee. But the film tells joke after joke and joke solemnly referring to January 6th as being a dark day where we lost or almost lost our democracy. Get it? They are owning the libs and their feelings!

At 82 minutes, January 6: The Most Deadliest Day is still tedious despite its running time. In addition to the mockery of Democrats, the film relies cheaply on awkward silences, obvious false statements about geography and history, eating, talking while eating, and random references to other movies for laughs. Outside a few authentic chuckles, those “laughs” mostly miss.

The film seems to argue that the storming of the Capitol was not that big of a deal compared to the George Floyd riots and therefore not a big deal at all. It does not seem to think that both can be bad, even if one was more destructive than the other. But the film also downplays the violence that did occur on January 6th and refuses to take the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or Trump himself to task for their roles in instigating the violence.

The movie also entertains the idea that there may have been massive election fraud in the 2020 election. Like Trump and others who claim massive election fraud, the movie offers no evidence that any occurred. It could not even muster any ridicule toward anyone whose only evidence is “Trust me, bro.”

January 6: The Most Deadliest Day also argues that the arm of justice was disproportionately forceful against non-violent protesters who entered the Capitol. It is the film’s only decent point. For example, the film tells the story of Siaka Massaquoi. After he listened to Trump’s speech at the Stop the Steal rally, he went to the Capitol where he entered for less than two minutes before obliging to leave after being asked to do so. His residence was raided by the FBI and he was eventually arrested, despite committing no violent acts. It seems very excessive to me and is an issue worth exploring further.

As far as production values go, January 6: The Most Deadliest Day is competently made. Since no major Hollywood studio would ever get behind a film like this, it is a testament to how technological progress has made filmmaking more accessible and distribution easier. As a satire, The Babylon Bee should take a cue from South Park in its approach to its targets of ridicule. South Park will take aim at all sides of an issue, indiscriminate in their satirical assaults. It makes their mockery more savage and subversive. The Babylon Bee ought to repent for the sin of squandering an opportunity to effectively lampoon the embarrassment that occurred on January 6th, 2021.