An image from The Brainwashing of My Dad (Gravitas Ventures)

If there’s a slightly crusty, cranky old character in your life—a dad or an uncle—there’s a decent chance that he gets his political commentary from right-wing media. Be it Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, or one of the many other conservative talk radio shows, older men have been easy marks for this inflammatory fare for decades now. Fox News, owned by self-described billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch and the brainchild of TV news pioneer Roger Ailes, has generated huge profits since its inception in 1996 by creating a narrative that trades on paranoia, emotion, and anger. The Brainwashing of My Dad examines the effects of the network’s tactics through a highly personal lens, with filmmaker Jen Senko documenting how her father was transformed from a Kennedy Democrat to a certified Rush Limbaugh “ditto head.”

This seems like a movie that was made about five years too late. Jon Stewart became a national hero after a solid 15 years of pillorying Fox News’s penchant for playing on the fears of the American electorate for ratings, and he retired last year after seemingly tiring of making the same point for so long. It seems unlikely that anyone but the converted will give the movie a look, and they will probably know most of the information in it. Part of the reason that Stewart’s The Daily Show seemed a bit stale in its last couple of years was the undeniable sense of preaching to the choir.

There is an important, interesting documentary to be made about the history of Fox News, and there are flashes of that here. Its background about its key figure, Roger Ailes, should be known by more people. Ailes worked as a media consultant for presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, and he was one of the earliest people to recognize the influence that television could have in our political system. After dismissing television initially as a silly gimmick, Nixon was persuaded of its importance by Ailes and gave him great control of how his message was communicated to voters. Ailes’s success in selling the deeply flawed, divisive Nixon as a credible presidential candidate was chronicled in the book The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinnis. A documentary about that book and/or time period, or even a dramatization, would be genuinely fascinating and important. This movie is a bit too personal for that.

The Brainwashing of My Dad does, though, contain some noteworthy interviews from media theorists ranging from Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, but everything they say here they’ve said countless times before. Chomsky is barely in it, but Herman is a bit more.

The Clinton political machine’s shock trooper David Brock is the featured expert interview, which should turn off anyone who views his political masters as being as much of the problem as Fox News or Limbaugh. Senko exclaims about how lucky she is to have secured a bit of Brock’s valuable time from his packed schedule. To the film’s credit, Brock’s past as a shameless attack Schnauzer for the right wing is presented, but his “evolution” to a longtime Clinton lap dog is also noted as a model for rational progress.

The Brainwashing of My Dad started out as a Kickstarter project, and accordingly there is a persistent sense of amateurism. There are frequent appearances by poorly-lit talking-head video grabs from Skype chats, presumably from backers of the film. They share stories about family members being indoctrinated by far-right news infotainment. There’s also a lot of footage of Senko’s father, pushing 90 years old, puttering around his living room, reading whatever book Rush is hawking that month. These elements imbue the film with a sense of padding, and Mr. Senko’s advanced age makes one wish that his daughter would just leave him alone.

Padding aside, there is some good information here that will get conspiracists nodding along in agreement and novices firing up their favorite search engine. There’s a long section on the infamous “Powell Memo” and bits about the John Birch Society and the “Norquist Meeting” that are must-knows for anyone critical of the American right. While it effectively offers solace to those whose loved ones have been seriously warped by the right-wing slant of Fox News, it is not the full-dress historical takedown of Roger Ailes and his minions that the title implies.