Reagan

Grade: C-

The quandary, or Catch 22 of a biopic is that the actors playing these often well-known people should at least slightly look and sound like them – but on the other hand, if they act and sound too much like them, it comes across as a shallow, surfaced SNL-like impression. I don’t know if there’s a way for them to truly win. All I know is that Reagan isn’t a winner.

Most of the film is a flashback. Sometimes it’s a flashback within a flashback. Its execution is laughably clunky. It’s told in story form, from an elderly former KGB agent (Jon Voight) to a young Soviet spy. It reminded me of how the body of The Princess Bride was a book being read to a boy by his grandfather. I almost wondered if the young spy was going to interrupt with “Whoa, wait a minute. Is this a kissing story?” Voight recites it like he was there for everything, or he’s reading a screenplay. 70-year-old Dennis Quaid plays Ronald Reagan most of the time, going back to his 30s and possibly younger. He’s not convincing in the earlier passages, and neither are whatever digital de-aging attempts employed.

Quaid vacillates between doing a very good impression, and sounding like Quaid. The makeup, hair, and clever camera angles help Quaid look like him. He’s got the trademark breathy “Well…” down pat. But all I saw was an imitation. As the women in his life, Mena Suvari as his first wife Jane Wyman and Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy fare markedly better. As American Pie and American Beauty turn 25 this year, Suvari has been on my mind. It was a pleasure to see her again, as well as Miller. She was so cute, charming, and prolific in the late 1980s/early 90s. It’s great that she came back for something, even if it’s this.

The ending throws us every biopicky convention in the book. There are captions that tell us what ends up happening to everyone, clips/pictures of the real-life people, and more business as usual. I just wanted it to end, but it’s like cheese on a fresh slice of pizza. It just stretches and stretches. Reagan is a train wreck, occasionally entertaining in its trainwreckiness, “driven” by a lead performance that uses the crutch of impersonation, never managing to dig deeper and find a character.

Grade: C-