Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
President Ronald Reagan. As with most presidents and politicians people love him or hate him.
Politics aside, if you want to take a walk through your childhood (for Generation Xers or Boomers) then I would recommend the movie “Reagan” released in theaters last weekend.
According to Newsweek, the movie beat box office expectations for the Labor Day Weekend, bringing in “an estimated cumulative total of $9.2 million, including projections for Monday.”
The movie is a biopic of our 40th president, but it doesn’t feel like some mundane, boring biopics.
The movie focuses on the Cold War and Communism, narrated by a former KGB spy. As near as I can determine, this character is not a factual person but it is a great way to tell a story.
It doesn’t cover every single year of Reagan’s life but it covers those moments that shaped him into the person that he would become.
When my husband suggested we go Saturday night, truth be told I was going more for the buttered popcorn than the movie.
However, a little over two hours later I was exiting Washakie Cinemas after thoroughly enjoying the movie and, of course, the popcorn. I learned some things I did not know about President Ronald Reagan, I remembered things that I had known in my childhood. In fact it was like taking a walk through some of my childhood.
I did not know anything about his childhood, about his faith or about his leadership role in the Screen Actors Guild. All of these things the movie showed led him to become president of the United States.
I did not know he was a lifeguard. I was reminded about his love of jelly beans, which came after President Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer. Then George H.W. Bush was noted for broccoli, or rather his hatred for it and banishing it on Air Force One. (I know my history by food association apparently.)
I remember his speech in West Germany and I remember the Berlin wall coming down. I remembered his visits with Mikhail Gorbachev.
The movie script was a partial adaptation of Paul Kengor’s “The Crusader.”
According to Production Notes for the movie from MJM Entertainment Group and ShowBiz Direct, John Avildsen was the initial director for the movie but then fell ill.
However, his view of the film perfectly describes it, “Rocky was not a story about boxing. Boxing was simply Rocky’s job. Similarly, the Reagan film is not a film about politics, but the story of a man who happens to be in politics.”
The director, Sean McNamara, did a great job of flashing back to early childhood. Some movies the flashbacks are clunky and at times confusing. The flashbacks in “Reagan” were smooth and played important parts in telling the overall story of Reagan, the man.
The make-up artists did a great job, in my opinion, in giving Dennis Quaid the distinct facial features of Ronald Reagan.
Like any movie you can find a message in it if you look or you can be thoroughly entertained as I was, including seeing some of the MTV campaign commercials from his second campaign (talk about flashbacks).
If you are looking for a message in the movie, perhaps the director Sean Macnamara said it best when he wrote in the Production Notes, “Whatever our political views, movies about hope and success and visions, tempered by failures and setbacks, are important for us to hold on to. Big dreams and hard work can become your own story to tell. My work has led me to curate some amazing stories. After all, we all need to be reminded to dream audacious dreams and even be prepared for those that are completely out of our reach, to come true. So, go ahead and dream big. You never know what you’re being prepared for.”