Internet Movie Database Movie Reviews
A weekend at FDR’s retreat, when the King and Queen of England came to visit and ask for Amerca’s help with WWII.
Mr. Otter and I have actually been seeing a lot of movies in the theater, which is kind of out of character for us; we’d usually rather wait and see them at home. Unless it’s big-time explodo, which I prefer seeing on the big screen with the ginormous sound system.
But we saw previews for this, and it looked good. We like Bill Murray very much, and the previews looked good…FDR and the royals, what could be better? and ACTUAL HISTORY, too. Mr. Otter was so excited.
So on opening weekend, he checked the local theaters…and it wasn’t playing.
And the next weekend, he checked…nope.
The third weekend, it was finally going to open…but we were out of town for a couple of days, and already had a date to see a movie in Ft. Bragg. So we got home from our trip at 1:30 pm. We checked movie times, thinking we’d go out that evening…and there was a 2:45 show.
We could make it, he said. It’s a short movie…
All right, I said, let’s go for it.
And after all that? it wasn’t so much of a much, unfortunately.
See, the previews showed all the good stuff- Bill Murray as FDR interacting with the very formal King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the current QEII’s parents). The other part of the story, his affair with his cousin Daisy, was hinted at…but it turns out that that was most of the movie. The historical and interesting stuff was pushed to the sidelines, and she was the narrator and focus of the movie.
And you know what? she was DULL. Every time the movie switched back to her viewpoint, or her, it just slowed to a crawl. The fact that FDR had mistresses is not a revelation to me, the details did not titillate me, and I really didn’t care about her. It would have been a much stronger and more interesting movie if they had concentrated on the people who had actual personalities and left her out or on the sidelines.
Very disappointing.
theotterlimits 