"Well, first off, I think George Bush is an asshole," drawls a 73-year-old outsider artist as he smiths a metal piece for his Kansas front yard. But despite its roots as a hotbed of radical thinking, his home state is now staunchly red, a dichotomy explored in director Joe Winston's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Based on the book by Thomas Frank, this relatively nonjudgmental documentary breaks no new ground as it speaks to members of both wings, and where you fall in the color scheme will dictate exactly what you take from it.

The right should find validation in the stories of people like Angel, a formerly battered wife who gathered strength from her faith, while the left will cheer Donn, a farmer and "Populist without a party," disillusioned with the Republican treatment of the working class. It's borderline unsporting at this point to allow the evangelical-minded to talk on camera, their words demonstrating a scary lack of self-awareness. Home-schooled and now Christian-colleged, Brittany may never have to learn that freedom of worship has always been kind of a big deal in her beloved country, while her mother muses that the Republican Party lost control of Congress in 2006 because the Democrats bought the election...not because it was God's will or anything like that.