Review of Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) by Ron D — 25 Dec 2012

I really wanted to like this film, though perhaps that's because I grew up just a few miles away in Rhinebeck and in the shadow of FDR most of my young life. It is odd, too, that I used to drive past the Suckley estate when it was at its nadir -- and had no idea that Daisy still lived there in her dotage.

That said, I was hoping the movie with evoke that time and place. It did not. Though I heard it was shot in and around the Roosevelt estate, little else places it in Hyde Park (did anyone ever call it "on the Hudson" - I never heard that..) and we certainly never even see the Hudson. OK. Maybe I'm too close to it, but if you had a movie called "Night on the Seine," I'd expect at least one gratuitous shot of the Pont Neuf!

As to the film making itself?

Murray is certainly an odd choice. He isn't bad, per se. He still has that sparkle that made him such a wonderful, compelling comedian -- but perhaps that's the problem. He may be older and looking crusty, but I am forever waiting for him to crack wise. Though the fault isn't really his that this doesn't fall together. It's the classic case of "there not being much there, there." The story is not important, except to the people involved, and that's not us. The pacing is languid to the point of somnambulance. It's as if the director thought; hey, stuff happened slower back then. Maybe reality did unreel more slowly, but the movies of the 30s didn't! In fact, the good ones had snap.

Particularly missing from the entire film is any setup to place you in the context of the times. I'm sure the director thought it too "old school" to show us what was happening in Europe or the U.S. at the time, but given that most people today don't know more than ten minutes worth of history, a little exposition might have helped.

And let's talk about Daisy. Was there ever a weaker, less interesting "main character," if that is what she is supposed to be? I'm not blaming Linney for her portrayal, but the writer and director for giving us a woman who we know almost nothing about and learn even less about during the course of the movie. She was a secret lover? That's it? Ddid she have some life before this? Did she have a job? Go to college? Have aspirations? Nada. You won't find it here. She is a paper thin a characterization as you can find....

At the end of the day, this is a very small movie, which wastes the talents of the actors involved and does nothing to expand on the legend of one of our greatest Presidents....