Tacky. Mediocre. Waste of Talent.

I am no fan of Ronald Reagan; to my mind he was responsible for setting in motion a good many things that have created the broken Republican Party of today. However I have never been convinced by those who yammer that his Alzheimer's began during his Presidency and that half the time it was Nancy who was calling the shots. Reagan left office in 1989; his Alzheimer's diagnosis was not made until five years later, and despite my dislike for his administration I do not believe they would have covered for him had he not been in possession of his faculties while in office.

Anyway, Alzheimer's aside, this film's portrayal of a rather incompetent man who is out of his element in the White House does not gibe with history. For starters, he was not only President of the Screen Actors Guild for a period, but also Governor of California. I never liked the man, but he was nobody's fool. In fact in many ways he was one of the savviest politicians of the Twentieth Century: his jingoistic rhetoric and constant flag-waving endeared him to the Right; to this day they consider him a hero.

But eye digress. I didn't see all of this film; despite the presence of a heavy-duty leading lady, it is a rather amateurish business and has a tacky, tabloid feel to it that I found myself wondering if it was intentional. The only accurate moment in the first hour or so is when Secretary of State Alexander Haig (Bill Smitrovich) declares himself to be "in charge" after the assassination attempt; of course even school kids knew he was making a fool of himself because the line of succession did not include him; if the Vice President was not available, responsibility would have passed to the Speaker of the House. That one moment, with the rest of Reagan's staff watching him and groaning as he makes a bad situation worse, is one of the few real moments in the picture.

It is very hard to sort out fact from fiction from rumor from speculation in this rather tacky production, and the performances of the cast are not much help either. Judy Davis, arguably the best actor in the entire cast, delivers an uncharacteristically shallow portrait of the First Lady. The script isn't exactly a help to her; one gets the impression that the actress gave up early on and just went through the motions and collected her paycheck.

Brolin works very hard to deliver a particular picture of Reagan: a not-very-bright man out of his element and possibly already showing early signs of dementia. Unfortunately Brolin is either out of his depth here or director Ackerman simply couldn't get him to probe deeper; his performance, like most of the rest of the acting in this picture, is all on the surface and so tacky and obvious that at times this thing comes across as a caricature.



Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
roflol ><