Skip to main content

An American Fantasy: Rob Reiner's The American President

 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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Return:Stanley Kramer's IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

 IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Spencer Tracy, Ethel Merman, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Sid Caesar. Dir. Stanley Kramer, MGM, 1963 I do not generally write about films I stop watching halfway. What's the point? I either have nothing positive to say about it or was in the wrong mood. In both cases I'm ignorant of its full length to perhaps do it justice. In the case of Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy smash, however, I feel compelled to make an exception.  My problem with the movie is not my mood, nor disappointment because it's not the movie I once heard. In fact, my biggest problem is that I haven't heard it described in glowing terms, or any, since I was about 9. See, IAMMMMW used to air anually on one or another of the networks, often in December. My parents didn't care for it and never watched it, but my friends watched anytime it aired and talked about it in rapturous terms. Until about 9-10 years old, when it seemed to drop out of conversation, or conv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Junkie-fatigue: Taylor Hackford's Ray

 Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Terence Howard, Warwick Davis, Curtis Armstrong. Dir. Taylor Hackford, Bristol Bay/Universal, 2004 Jamie Foxx, nominated for both Supporting Actor and Best Actor at the 2004 Academy Awards, won Best Actor for Ray and, watching Ray tonight for the first time in about 15 years, I'm glad it went down that way. Tom Cruise gave a career-best performance in Collateral, for which Foxx received his Supporting Actor nod. It's a great performance, too, but no moreso than Cruise, ignored by the Academy, so it feels right to me that Foxx got his statuette for the movie where he didn't share the spotlight with a star of Cruise's magnitude. Not that it would make much difference if Foxx had some high-voltage costar in Ray, because the movie simply doesn't exist without Foxx and his essay of Ray Charles. Not unlike Coal Miner's Daughter, the other music biopic whose star picked up a Best Actor, Ray occurs from Ray's point of view, so ther...
Post a Comment
Read more

Obligatory TL;DR Statement of Purpose

 A not-so-brief explanatory note as to how this blog works: I can't recall a time when movies weren't my passion, my compulsion, my addiction. Ever since my parents took me to see Disney's Bedknobs&Broomsticks, I've been hopeless. Born in 1967, I grew up with free range parents. They took my brother and me to all kinds of movies, often using Hollywood as a babysitter. We saw movies about which many parents today would cluck their tongues (though nothing R-rated until I was 12. My first R-rated movie was MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN.) Though my parents were professionals and we grew up affluent, our home saw its share of dysfunction. Dad was in the house, but not often present. Mom, stressed and disappointed at discovering her marriage wasn't an equal partnership, took out her frustrations on me.  Without getting too far into the weeds, let me just say my adult life has been far from typical middle class stability. I've never had a career. Never finished ...
3 comments
Read more