The film "Reagan" has been met with a stark contrast between audience and critic reviews, a phenomenon that author Paul Kengor likens to the landslide victory of President Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
The film, which has been hailed as one of the best-reviewed films of the year by audiences, currently boasts a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it has been met with a meager 18% approval rating from critics.
According to Fox News, critics have been harsh in their assessment of the film. A Boston Globe writer dismissed it as an "interminable hagiography" and "a wretched 2 -hour bore that's uncurious about its subject." A Washington Post critic deemed it "worthless" as a historical piece, and the Daily Beast went as far as to label it the worst movie of the year.
Kengor, however, sees a parallel between the film's reception and the 1980 presidential election. He stated, "Yeah, the disparity is really profound. In fact, it reminds me of what happened in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states, which is probably about 98% of the states. If you do the math on this, 49 of 50 states won about 60% of the vote, won the Electoral College 525 to 13. But you had these liberal critics who didn't like him, and they were very much in the minority."
The author further argued that many of the critics lacked the proper perspective, as they were born after Reagan's presidency. He said, "A lot of those 18% - now some are fair-minded critics who didn't like this or that about the film artistically But a lot of them, when you read the reviews, they're clearly partisan. They're clearly ideological."
The journey of "Reagan" to the big screen began when filmmaker Mark Joseph expressed interest in adapting Kengor's book "God and Ronald Reagan" into a film. However, it was Kengor's other book, "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," that ultimately served as the basis for the movie. It took two decades for the film to finally hit theaters, with Dennis Quaid in the lead role.
Kengor praised Quaid's performance, stating, "I can't imagine that any of them would have been better than Dennis Quaid. I really just marvel at how he nailed Reagan - the voice, the face, even the passion, the enthusiasm. All along, the trickiest thing was going to be to get someone to play Reagan who didn't look like he was doing a parody of Reagan."
The high audience score on Rotten Tomatoes seems to echo Kengor's sentiment, indicating that many viewers were impressed with Quaid's portrayal of the former president.
Kengor expressed his bewilderment at the critics' response, particularly given the current calls for unity. He said, "So we give them this really positive movie about unity, which is what they claim they want. And they hate it, they hate it. They call it a hagiography, a movie about a saint. Well, it has a happy ending. We won the Cold War. We didn't have nuclear war."
The critics' incredulity, Kengor suggests, stems from their inability to comprehend a time when America was united under a well-liked president, a time that the film "Reagan" seeks to portray. Despite the critics' disdain, the film's high audience score suggests that many Americans appreciate this portrayal of a time when traditional values and individual freedom were championed.
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