MovieChat Forums > Reagan (2024) Discussion > Is it really that bad?

Is it really that bad?


I'm interested in seeing it, but reviews are pretty brutal, but I also know critics are very liberal so of course they will give it a bad review.

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Looks like it's a lot more popular with regular viewers than critics. 80 point spread on Rottentomatoes.

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The audience score on rotten tomatoes is excellent. I’m planning to go on Wednesday to the theaters to see it

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It's watchable but it tries to do too much to fit Reagan's lifetime into one film. It also has a weird narrative angle in which a retired KGB analyst contextualizes Reagan's career, trying to create the narrative that Reagan won the Cold War. The acting was fine. Dennis Quaid shifts in and out of his Reagan imitation, and he looks too old when Reagan was a young Hollywood actor. He did capture Reagan's humor and forceful personality, though. Penelope Ann Miller was good as Nancy Reagan.

Reagan's handling of the AIDS epidemic is reduced to a montage, and I'm surprised they gave Iran-Contra as much time as they did. The film's pacing was terrible. I was getting restless after more than two hours had passed.

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I did not really have a problem with the pacing. It moves along very briskly and I was never bored, though by the end I was ready for it to go ahead and wrap up. 2 hrs 20 mins is fairly long but I did think they needed that kind of run time to do a proper cradle-to-grave biopic.

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For the first two hours, the movie moves along just fine. By the time they were depicting the Iran-Contra scandal, the film's pacing bothered me. I was squirming in my seat and older folks during my screening were looking at their phones. Doing a cradle-to-grave biopic was a mistake in my opinion. Either just focus on the presidential years with flashbacks to his early life, or do it as a miniseries.

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It was pretty good, Dennis Quaid pretty much played Reagan as a painting come to life. Really no interpretation at all. I knew it wasn't Reagan but I did sometimes forget it was Dennis Quaid. I'm shocked he endorsed Trump, but I guess it fits.

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I saw it yesterday and enjoyed it. It is definitely a fawning portrait of Regan that makes him out to be nearly a saint, but frankly, I was happy to watch something again that wasn't cynical or trying to subvert expectations. Half the movie covers his childhood up to the point where he runs for President and the other half is devoted to his presidency. That's a lot to do in 2 hrs 20 mins but I thought they pulled it off fairly well.

I believe the budget was only $25 million and they did a lot with such a small amount of money. The film feels bigger than a $25 million film.

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Is it worth paying $9.99 on Amazon to purchase it or just rent it for $5.99?

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If you're a fan of Reagan and like to rewatch movies, you probably won't mind owning it.

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I'd give it a 3.5/10. Very dull and amateurishly made. Quaid was the best part of it.

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