Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Eichard Dreyfuss. Dir. Rob Reiner, Warner Bros., 1995
Once in a while, I find myself silenced by a film I've seen, if not in a long while, and it takes me by surprise. I've seen The American President at least twice before. I know it's what inspired screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to develop The West Wing and cast Sheen as President. I'm an unapologetic Sorkin fan, and I used to revere Reiner as a can't-miss filmmaker. I knew what I was getting when I plunked my buck down Tuesday.
So I'm at least a little surprised to discover The American President is a film that quiets me for a moment, that it affects me as much as it did this morning. Sorkin's White House and Washington, DC are a fairytale, a civics-fanboy's fantasyland of How Things Oughta Be, Dammit. Some on the left take issue with his political entertainments, but they are entertainments. They're not white papers. They won't be policy. To me, The American President felt like Reiner & Sorkin's prior collaboration, A Few Good Men, an "edgy courtroom drama" which got over by feeling like an old fashioned Frank Capra movie. Reiner's work always has an Old Hollywood romance to it, and The American President represents Rob Reiner's full court press.
Unfortunately, it also represents Reiner's full court press as a polemicist, a tendency which ultimately sank him as a can't-miss director. My politics align with Aaron Sorkin's, more or less, and I agree with all the ideas and ideals of this film, and they're especially affecting following the previous Administration. That said, American President works best when it sticks to being a romance. The process-side of the movie, the inner workings of the West Wing which became the TV show, also succeed, but the way Reiner ties the romance in to a character debate/culture wars subplot that allows him and Reiner to pontificate about How Things Oughta Be, Dammit is heavy handed and pushes buttons this movie didn't need to push. A romcom simply looking at the structural issues of dating the President has great promise, and in fact works remarkably well, but Reiner wanted to use that romcom to make rather preachy, polarizing points. I imagine conservatives must pull their hair out during sequences of this film and, if the idea personally delights me, I see no practical reason for the film to have gone there. It's more than enough as a romantic comedy fantasy of DC. It doesn't need to be the liberal rallying cry Reiner tries to make it.
That didn't stop most of The American President from lighting me up like a Christmas tree. As I said, I do agree with the more overt sentiments espoused and they were emotionally affective for me this morning. I find Sorkin's civics-fanboy fantasies incredibly appealing and engaging, and Reiner knows how to make movies I fall into and regret having to fall out of again. He did, anyway. He went south shortly after The American President, leaning into the pontificating with The Ghosts of Mississippi, then wandering off into a befuddling career of treacly rehashes of his better work from the '80s and '90s. He's at the top of his game in American President, however.
Always charming and romantic, The American President now feels and looks even more like a fantasy. It's the kind of fantasy I can't ever get enough of, where Great People turn out to actually be great and where things work out How They Oughta, Man. It's nonsensical, and fluffy, and I buy it all. The American President is aging into a great American romance.
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