The American President

Rating:
Summary: A Sweet, Engaging Fantasy
Review: This is a very entertaining film and I enjoy it every tieme I see it. Of course none of this would ever happen in the body politic of the 1990's or today. The wonderful speech at the end would be laughed at and derided by the pundits on CNN and Fox and Rush Limbaugh would be playing it over and over with bathroom sound-effects. Knowing that makes it bittersweet and maddening at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of a film score
Review: I have 2 favorite film scores. One of them is Denny Zeitlin's score for Phil Kaufman's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The other one is the music for "The American President". It uses music in the most giving of ways, offering sublime sensations of goodness and longing. I am forever addicted to this movie's magical qualities.

Rating:
Summary: When channel surfing, I always stop when it's on.
Review: I love this movie. It is one of my favorites. It has so many catch phrases, I can't pick a favorite. It was the first DVD I purchased.
Hmmmm, any more superlatives?
Watch it with a date, or alone.

Rating:
Summary: A liberal communist dream!
Review: What should we have expected from gay drug addict Mr. Sorkin and Rob "Meathead" Riener? This projectile vomit inducing movie is an absolute disgrace that perfectly showcases the Hollywood political mindset. You get to hear characters {including the President} say things like, "my 5 year old can buy an Uzi", and, "in 10 years any car with an internal combustion engine will be obsolete!".
I only hope that people will recognize this piece of garbege for what it is.

Rating:
Summary: Good movie. Horrendous DVD transfer - AVOID!
Review: This is a charming film with good performances. It reads like a precursor to Aaron Sorkin's "West Wing," except Martin Sheen is the best friend in this one. Michael Douglas is president.

HOWEVER, the DVD transfer on this disc is fairly notorious on DVD review sites as being one of the worst ever created. You would be doing yourself a disservice by buying this disc. Get the VHS tape or wait for a new edition on DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Hateful republicans
Review: So many people seem to bash this movie for the sole reason that the fictional president is a liberal. So I have decided to write an alternate story.

Instead of going after guns the republican president and his staff stay up at night lamenting the fact that they need to invade a fictitous country, but the american people are unsure if they think it is right. Then in a moment of genius Michael J. fox's character comes up with the solution, they will lie about that country having WMD.

And instead of Annete Benning working for a enviornmental group she works for a oil company. She has the job of constantly reminding the president that while yes he is president, they are in charge and will be more than glad to rewrite all the enviormental laws themselves.

Throw in some empty political promises to make the president seem compassionate, and I think we would have a great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Awful DVD transfer
Review: Regardless of how one feels about this film, be aware that this non-anamorphic DVD contains one of the worst transfers I have seen to date. The picture quality is terrible and is akin to the kind of picture one would expect to find on a bootleg DVD. In fact, I have seen bootlegs with better picture quality than this.

I would suggest waiting for a "Special Edition" release with a newer transfer. Or, one may consider the possibility of purchasing the Region 2/4 Edition, as I did (assuming, of course, that one has a multi-region player that can handle PAL). It is anamorphic and has a MUCH better transfer!

Rating:
Summary: REINER'S MASTERPIECE RUINED ON DVD
Review: "The American President" was a script idea floating around Hollywood since the late 1970's. Originally entitled, "The President Elopes" it was first conceived as a flat out farce and then a melodrama before falling into the capable hands of director, Rob Reiner in the early 1990's. Retitled and rewritten, the resulting film, about what would happen if a widowed President decided to date a political activist, the film emerged as a touching, sentimental and witty romantic comedy that warmed the heart and endeared itself in the mind. As President Andrew Sheppard, Michael Douglas is simply amazing. Annette Benning is a sensation as his girlfriend, Sidney Ellen-Wade. Nice cameos from Martin Sheen, David Paymer and Michael J. Fox round out this stellar cast.
Unfortunately there's nothing stellar about the DVD transfer from Warner Brothers. It's not anamorphic and is riddled with the kind of excessive digital grain and anomolies that one can't fathom from a major player like Warner Home Video. Aliasing, shimmering of fine details, excessive edge enhancement and extreme digital tiling create a visual image that is gritty, harsh and overpowering on the eyes. Colors can be well balanced and at other times quite smeared. The soundtrack has been remastered to 5.1 surround but one wonders why the extra effort was taken, considering how badly the rest of the film looks. THERE ARE NO EXTRAS! Bottom line: Don't waste your time or money. The good news - since this release Warner Video has done a complete 180 degree turn about so we just might see a remastering effort of this title in the near future. Here's to hoping.

Rating:
Summary: lefty bias? probably; romantic fun? sure
Review: Dishonest, but immensely enjoyable, moreso than its more serious version - "The Contender". In this flick, Michael Douglas plays Andy Schepard, Hollywood's version of the perfect president - a center-left people-pleaser who doesn't let his Stanford education (under a nobel-prize winning economist) or his perfect grades get between him and the soul of the American people. A widower, he falls for Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning), a shark of a consultant who works for a DC-based lobby committed to environmental protection. Mixing politics and pleasure, Schepard courts Wade even as he pushes for Congress to pass groundbreaking legislation Wade's lobby has been seeking for years. Conscious but apathetic to the minds of Americans who don't approve of the widowed Chief's extra-marrital romancing (of a liberal, no less), the all-too decent Schepard remains silent about his relationship, determined not to let the business of statesmanship become bogged down by meaningless debates about "character" - even as both become touch-stones of his political foe, the vile neo-conservative Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss, in a thankless role). Although the script plays up the idea that the president's private life is his own, it also blurs the lines between Schepard's and Wade's two relationships (lovers on the one hand, president-to-lobbyist on the other) making it impossible to separate the Chief's private life with his public existence. The script seals this flaw by proposing a complex deal between Schepard and Benning under which he will push for her environmental protection bill if she can guarantee enough support for it. Schepard is under pressure to pass his own pet-bill, a deceptively revolutionary anti-crime package, but figures that he can sell Congress on his bill and Sydney's if she can guarantee enough support for her own. When Schepard's relationship so erodes his popularity that he'd be hard-pressed to pass either bill alone (even when Sydney fullfills her half of the deal, and signs on a hated triumvirate of auto-industry pols behind her environmental bill), the President finds himself in a deep dilemma that touches on his love for Wade and his duty to his office.

Liberal wish fulfillment? Not a doubt. The film is also incredibly disengenuous - positing Rumson at the center of a bunch of fatcat GOP'ers who sip brandy while considering the unprincipled ends to which they will use Wade against Schepard, as if they had nothing more appropriate to use against him. (the film summarily dismisses Rumson and fellow right-wingers as backward political hacks who go for the jugular and base their popularity on the votes of older Americans who fear for the future and yearn for a past that never really existed. The biggest cheat is Schepard's staunch unwillingness to confront the vile Bob Rumson directly on the "character" issue. Since the film is pretty much apolitical (it touched on issues like crime, gun control and the environment without ever really dealing with them) the character issue is pretty much the only real nugget the script has. By keeping Schepard silent on that subject until the end of the movie, he pretty much saves both sides the trouble of really tearing to pieces the question of whether a president can sleep with the proponents of legislation pending in Congress without raising a few well-reasoned doubts. Instead, the script's GOP, the brandy-sipping fatcats, never utter a word about gun-control, abortion, church-state separation, corporate welfare or the environment - something I doubt even liberals would find all that realistic. Unlike Schepard, the script immediately hits upon Schepard's character as its focus - sure to remind us of his top-flight education (his "Stepford Child" level grades), his integrity, his honest-to-goodness honesty and how much everybody seems to like him. All of our heroes are smart and funny, and even the slings and arrows of political misfortune just roll of their backs.

If the movie rises above its lefty addictions for even this right-wing fundamentalist, it's because it's west-wing wish fulfillment is pretty much unconcealed. Think of this flick as a liberal version of "Red Dawn" - a movie that doesn't so much change people's minds as reinforce what their minds were. Gun-control liberals can sit through that flick because they know going in that it's about a bunch of rural farm kids with guns staring down the Red Army; - ditto in "President" for card-carrying NRA members who get pretty much what they expected, politically speaking in any event. The clever repartee of its characters (especially David Paymer and Michael J. Fox as his consultants - one being fearless, the other seeing signs of Schepard's apocalypse even in his favorable ratings) keeps the film from getting to heavy and messagey. Nor could the story be dismissed as apologia for the Lewinsky affair - with Wade's position as a lobbyist making her relationship with Schepard look more questionable (not less) than "Monica-gate". Schepard is no Bill Clinton, Sydney Ellen Wade is no Monica. In short, this is a flick even Bob Rumson can enjoy

Rating:
Summary: My favorite movie!
Review: This is a wonderful movie. I have watched it at least 10 times. Whenever I need a movie to pick up my spirits, this is the one I watch!