Way NOT to move the needle, fellas. Look, there’s only one reason to release a biopic of the most beloved modern Republican nine weeks prior to a presidential election – to influence that election towards Republican favor. But this cloying and nauseating indulgence ain’t getting it done. The reasons are many, but they can be boiled down to:
1) Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.
2) Smiles, styles, good feelings, and a legacy of crap, Reagan is easily the most overrated President of my lifetime.
3) Even the biographer here finds him fairly one-dimensional. [Geez, man, did you care about anything besides the Cold War? Tell me, “Great Communicator,” how did exclusively living on a ranch for your post-gubernatorial life prepare you to understand the problems of an entire nation? And, seriously, did you ever consider the issues of anybody who wasn’t a wealthy white man?]. Finally,
4) The film sucks.
Before I go on, let me tell you my relationship with Reagan, so you can know my bias: There is no question that America felt better about itself under Reagan. Inflation and the Iran hostage affair under President Carter -whether or not they were his fault- had left us all weary and accusatory. Reagan trotted in on his white horse with “Morning in America” on his lips and a vision of the USA leading the world again. We loved that vision. We loved Reagan. We did. I do not deny it.
And yet, while Reagan’s demeanor and press was sunny, Reagan’s policies were OHMYGOD bad, and their legacy lasted a great deal longer than our patriotic swelling. Reagan introduced “supply-side economics” in which job creators [i.e. companies, wealthy men] would be given tax breaks at the expense of the people who worked for them. This economic philosophy has dominated Republican politics since, despite the fact that 50 years later, there is ZERO evidence to show that giving rich people more money helps anyone but rich people. Leading from supply-side voodoo, every Republican administration since Reagan has ended in a recession, in turn, always leading to a Democratic administration having to undo the damage, which it has (go ahead, look it up. I’m 100% right). We just saw this happen in Trump/Biden, and yet we STILL are under the illusion that Republicans are better with the economy. :SMH: Let’s be clear here: supply-side economics gutted the middle class. On top of this, Reagan ignored AIDS, which existed since the 1970s. Reagan wouldn’t even say the word “AIDS” until 1985. Thousands upon thousands died waiting for him to have a policy. While he wasn’t outright racist or misogynist, one can’t help notice how unfriendly his hierarchical policies were to minorities and women and the poor of all demographics, and how his entire adult life he surrounded himself with white men. Under Reaganism, The Right wed itself to Christian nationalists, unions disappeared, the RW media [Fox News and the like] was born, and Democrats became the enemy.
And the hideous Pandora’s box of self-destructive and divisive policies that Reagan opened has been expanded tenfold since.
Reagan also seemed to introduce a new era of anecdotal politics. I think I’d call it leadership by induction. Not a whiz with numbers or macroeconomics, Ronald Reagan, actor, was a darn good storyteller, and during this time we saw him introduce policy after policy with a story. The deal was that as long as he could successfully identify one (1) person who fit his narrative, then his outlook was just. There is no greater Republican tool than the anecdotal point of evidence. 100,000 Americans died of AIDS in the 1980s, but … Willie Horton! Therefore, President HW Bush! We see this in the film, where Reagan and other Republicans successfully identified Herb Sorrell (do Republicans know this name? Because I sure had never heard of him) as a Communist, and therefore Communism was replete in Hollywood and the American way of life. No, they didn’t identify anybody else, and it was difficult to see how Sorrell, who isn’t a character in the film btw — it’s so much easier to hate when you deliberately learn nothing of the person you hate — influenced the American way of life in any way.
We see this today with Trump, except he no longer feels the need to find a real person to fit his narrative, he just makes one up. [Hint: every time he tells a story that includes the word “sir,” it is a complete fabrication.]
Most importantly, the true Reagan legacy is that the Republican Party slowly realized it no longer had to have plans or ideas or anything resembling intellectualism. In fact, those are bad things, as is having a party leader with an IQ over 100. All they truly had to do was identify an enemy and tell you that enemy is destroying the American way of life. This is MAGA. This is modern Republicanism.
Reagan was a testament to the idea that if you make lackluster white men proud of themselves, they will treat you like a god. That is the Reagan legacy.
[On a side note here, there is little more disgusting in modern American politics than the following: whenever the RW encounters a person, idea, or stance they find disagreeable, they yell, “COMMUNISM!! SOCIALISM!!” etc. Yet when confronted by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and State Department not only with evidence, but indictments and convictions regarding foreign interference in US elections, the Republican response is, “RUSSIAN HOAX!! RUSSIAN HOAX!!” You people are unbelievable.]
Reagan, the film, is about the Cold War. Of course it is; it’s all the man ever talked about, “the evil empire” and such. Well, let me give you my impression there as well: Reagan got into an expensive and ugly nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. The film claims that Reagan was playing 3D chess here; that somehow Reagan, genius, knew he could bankrupt the Soviets if he just continued the arms race to an absurd degree. [Well, it happened, didn’t it?] As a kid, I viewed this as sheer self-destructive stupidity. How many nuclear weapons does one country need, really? And what is the natural conclusion of amassing weapon after weapon after weapon? I’ll give you a hint, it sure isn’t “peace,” regardless of what these jokers espouse. I lived my teen years in fear that nuclear war was inevitable. That is my legacy of Reaganism.
Oh, and here’s a question: if the end goal was to bankrupt the USSR and end Communism forever, why didn’t we have a better plan of what to do when we achieved that goal? I mean, everything Putin has done is aimed at revenge for the Cold War. We could have made better choices to eliminate that outcome.
I’ll give Reagan this much: he never would have kissed Putin’s ass. That is a unique Trumpism.
Let’s get to the film: Reagan had a surprisingly boring childhood and early adult life. During such, he acquired a hatred of Commies and a deep understanding of tides; you could call lifeguard Ronnie The Prince of Tides, but I think that title is taken. Hence, Ronald Reagan, oceanographer. In college, he was once nice to black people and he listened to his second wife. Therefore, he wasn’t racist or sexist … despite the fact that there wasn’t a woman or a minority to be found in his cabinet … ever (or, at least not as far as I could tell).
The narrative of Reagan’s life is brought to us bitter Russian agent Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight), who lets us in on the secret that the USSR had fully planned to take over the globe and had infiltrated the USA and would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid!
Yes, the USSR had successfully taken over Hollywood and planned to influence American minds except for, darn it, that Ronald Reagan as head of the SAG kept pushing back on Russian influence.
This part I found a bit refreshing, if disgusting revisionist history – I can’t tell you how many films I’ve seen about the red scare in this country. Trumbo was the most recent, iirc; but there are at least a dozen others. We generally came to understand, as a people and a nation, that Joe McCarthy was an opportunistic asshole constantly fabricating enemy movements and scapegoating political rivals. Hollywood tells similar stories of shame in labelling writers “communists” and blackballing them permanently on the basis of, often, nothing. And, yet, Reagan is a film that claims, “IT WAS ALL REAL!” No, really, Communists were everywhere and would have taken over the country if not for the heroic actions of Ronald Reagan (Dennis Quaid).
OK, boomer.
I’m trying to imagine the titles of films if Communists had truly taken over. 12 Angry Comrades … Some Like It Hot, but All Have Equal Access to Heat … Attack of the 50 Foot Bolshevik … Rebel without Adequate Papers or Supervision … Oh, yeah, all that could have happened. Imagine if the Wizard of Oz ended with Dorothy being forced to give each munchkin the right to wear the ruby red slippers. That shit could happen! Thank you, St. Reagan.
Despite being a crappy actor and going bankrupt, Ronald Reagan was a white man at the white time, which meant he eventually owned a ranch of several acres where he lived, just he and his doting honey, Nancy Reagan (Penelope Ann Miller). Well, his second doting honey; Republicans only care about the family values of non-Republicans. And given this steady influence of … horses, he decided he knew enough to lead California, which he did. It mostly involved facing down college students and some stuff with Black Panthers that the film didn’t go into, but, hey, facing down college students. That took balls.
And then he went back to his ranch, only appearing in 1976 and 1980 for votes. At the time of the latter, he appeared, saw his shadow, which meant six more weeks of nuclear winter after his election.
It took an hour of film to get to this point. We didn’t learn much except that Reagan hated Commies. Yeah, we kinda knew that. What else you got? Oh, more Commies. More Red Scare. Oh hey, he was shot! Want to t
ell us about that? Hmmm, only to say he survived more determined than ever to ignore citizens and issues and focus on the real problem: Communism.
God, is this film boring. Hey, I did like two scenes. 1) The summit with Mikhail Gorbachev (Olek Krupa). If you can stand to get to this part in the film, it isn’t worth it, but there’s a smile. 2) The scene of Cold War “checkmate,” i.e. “Tear down this wall!” This is a good recreation, if historically spotty in film context.
Speaking of which, I haven’t mentioned Iran-Contra, which SHOULD have been the biggest scandal in American history between Watergate and Trump. For the uninitiated, we didn’t like Iran. The Iran hostage crisis, as much as anything else, got Reagan elected in the first place. Shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, American hostages in Iran were released, and we gave Reagan all the credit, because … why? He was there. We still didn’t like Iran. Between 1981 and 1986, senior Reagan administration officials SOLD ARMS TO IRAN, which was illegal, and treasonous. Then they turned around and used that money to fund the Contras, a rebel group in Nicaragua … which was also illegal and prohibited by congress.
When the country found out about it and confronted Reagan, he essentially said, “I dunno. Wasn’t me” which is exactly the answer we didn’t need. For my money, either here he’s lying, and deserves impeachment for violation of oath of office, or he genuinely didn’t know about it, which paints him as a doddering fool not fit for office. Either way, this should have ended his presidency, but America didn’t have the stomach for it.
And neither did the film. It glossed over the details, ignored the weakness shown here and portrayed Reagan as “heroic,” bravely “telling the truth” to the American people at his wife’s behest.
This film is full of crap like that. Viktor Petrovich is in awe of Reagan’s steely resolve. Margaret Thatcher comes off as a Reagan groupie. Berkeley students totally respect the man who stood up to them [hint: No, they didn’t] As a result of the idol worship, the art suffers terribly. The performances here are wooden and stale. Dennis Quaid and Penelope Ann Miller both gave performances as if the director advised, “Don’t worry about any real acting here; people who love it won’t care and people who hate it will hate it anyway.” I caught myself headslapping more than once. As a result, this picture comes off less as a genuine biopic and more as something that Trump imagines and tells us about. I’m not sure this material could have been a good film, because, quite frankly, Reagan love was so situational while the Reagan legacy is so hateful. But, it could have been better than this … or at least shorter.
There once was a Prez named Ron
Who wanted those darn Commies gone!
So he made it his mission
To meet that condition
With a biopic that proved quite the yawn
Rated PG-13, 141 Minutes
Director: Sean McNamara
Writer: Howard Klausner
Genre: Love letter
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Reagan sycophants
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Realists
