[CENSORED]

WELCOME TO LEITH (F)* - This is not a bad documentary. However, there's no reason to watch this. I did so that you don't have to.

"Welcome to Leith" chronicles the attempt by white supremacist Craig Cobb to take over a town of a dozen or two souls by buying up property and populating the North Dakota burg with fellow white nationalists. He and his goofy sidekick come across as more bumbling than menacing as they spout racist rantings, fly the flags of the Aryan races and flaunt their weapons.

There's no way around the conclusion that this is a platform for hate-mongers. There might be arguments to be made for exposing this ugliness. This limp, uninspired documentary does not make that case. Any minor benefits to be asserted here are far overwhelmed by the hideousness of providing a forum to offensive provocateurs. The world is not made better by following them around with a camera. Cobb's taunting of a resident whose teen daughter was murdered is repulsive, and the airing of it holds no redeeming value.

Writer-directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker show no imagination in presenting the material. Handed a juicy story, they somehow manage to sap the energy and intrigue out of the narrative; the final act is clownishly anti-climactic. The young filmmakers show a weird obsession with time-lapse shots of clouds in the sky, to the point of parody.

There's a useful story to be told here, perhaps. This film is not it. Maybe no film is.

Honestly, find something more fulfilling to do for an hour and a half. Nothing to see here. Move it along.


* - We can't afford a researcher or archivist, but this might be only our second F grade.