Review of The American President (1995) by Adam J — 05 Sep 2009

Rob Reiner is a man without a genre. This is mostly a good thing, as he's made brilliant mockumentaries, romantic comedies, thrillers, even bizarre fantasy comedies. Few directors enjoy such variety, most choosing to return instead, Tim Burton-like, to the few things that interest them. But it goes both ways, and watching The American President I finally realised how little there is to identify him as a director. This is by far his most anonymous film. Like its fictional president it is genial, charming and strangely unimpeachable, but we've seen its like quite often. And both movie and president lose the audience utterly whenever they talk shop.

Michael Douglas plays Andrew Shepherd, widower and President of the United States. He leads a (relatively) quiet life with his daughter, and people like him. Then he meets Sydney Wade (Annette Bening), an environmental lobbyist, and falls in love. The scenes of him trying to start a relationship with her are highly enjoyable. Alas, presidential hopeful Bob Rumford (Richard Dreyfuss) uses Shepherd's love-life for a cruel character attack, and the President's popularity slips. Also, Sydney wants to put through a new bill to combat global warming, but the pressure's on the President to favour a hopeless crime bill instead.

The relationship is the interesting bit, although I'm not sure why. Douglas is funny and charming as the Prez, but Annette Bening is oddly prickly and inconsistent as Sydney. There are plenty of quite interesting characters in the White House - particularly Martin Sheen and Michael J. Fox - but they don't get much to do besides worry about the President's approval rating. And all the stuff about bills, votes and whatever else is going on is just tediously garbled. Perhaps it helps to brush up on American politics first, but if this had been a DVD, I'd have checked to make sure I didn't accidentally change the language settings. Shepherd's rebuttal speech at the end is empowering and well-acted stuff, but I'm not sure what he actually said.

And as for the direction, well, this is billed as a comedy but never feels like one. There are plenty of amusing little moments, but that's not the same thing.

It's enjoyable but not gripping, and finds itself in real danger of losing its audience whenever the plot heats up. There must be better Presidential movies out there - certainly with less tedious titles - but you could do worse than this one. That's just not much of an endorsement for a man with Misery, The Princess Bride and This Is Spinal Tap under his belt.