Quaid is good, but the movie…not as good – ORANGE COUNTY TRIBUNE

By Jocelyn Noveck/AP National Editor

“Is there anything worse than an actor championing a cause?” asks an annoyed Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife, at the beginning of “Reagan,” the new biopic starring Dennis Quaid.

Well, after watching two more hours of this story, an adoring look at the man who served two terms as our 40th president, we can say that there is certainly one thing worse: an actor without a movie.

But let’s not blame the star. Quaid, who has played more than one president, certainly has a charismatic smile, pomaded hair and, most importantly, a folksy voice that is so distinctive – close your eyes, and it will sound VERY familiar. If he were to appear on “Saturday Night Live” in this role, it would seem like a casting coup comparable to Larry David’s role as Bernie Sanders.

But this is not an SNL sketch, despite the fact that Jon Voight appears throughout the film with a thick Russian accent as a KGB spy, but we’ll get to that. This is a 135-minute film that demands a lot more depth. And so, to borrow a political phrase from Bill Clinton, who Quaid also played: It’s the script, stupid.

Lovingly directed by Sean McNamara from a screenplay by Howard Klausner, “Reagan” begins with a chilling event (and a parallel to a recent event): the attempted assassination of Reagan in Washington in March 1981, just two months after he became president.

Some say that Reagan cemented his relationship with the public by surviving this attempt; he told his wife Nancy from his bed, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Regardless, the filmmakers use this event to set up their story, and will return to it later, chronologically.

But their first argument is that Reagan came out of this anguish with a divine plan. “My mother used to say that everything in life happens for a reason, even the most discouraging failures,” he said. And as he would tell Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, everything from then on would be part of that divine plan.

The most important point here is that Reagan, according to this film, was the one responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union, because he showed the people of the world what freedom meant. “I knew he was the one,” says Viktor Petrovich, the retired spy played by Voight as the narrator throughout the film — the one who would bring it all down. The screenplay is based on Paul Kengor’s “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” and Kengor said Viktor was based on a number of KGB agents and analysts who tracked Reagan for years.

This point is made early on and repeatedly. The rest is a veritable historical narrative, with plenty of glorious and loving light shone around our star. We look back on his early years, learn about his mother and what she taught him about faith, and then his years in Hollywood as an actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild (and a Democrat) before fully committing to politics and the GOP.

We also see the newly divorced Reagan meet the attractive Nancy Davis, who will become his second wife, loving companion and constant companion. As Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller is a perfect actress with little nuance to exploit here. Together, they embark on a path to political stardom, starting with the governorship of California. When they arrive at a neighbor’s house to campaign, the housewife at the door hears Reagan’s initials “RR” and thinks it’s Roy Rogers.

But ten years later, Reagan was sworn in as president, beginning his eight-year term. “I was very keen to understand what was behind the facade,” says Voight’s Petrovich, explaining why Reagan had such an influence.

Maybe he could let us know then?

Because when this film ends, with the president’s death in 2004, a decade after announcing that he had Alzheimer’s disease, we don’t know much more about such an influential figure in American politics than we did at the beginning.

Of course, we find all the great hits. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” we see him say in 1987 in Berlin, a scene with great insistence.

It’s also amusing to see Jimmy Carter’s famous lines from the 1980 debates, such as “Here you go again,” and of course his famous deft deflection of the age issue in 1984, with Walter Mondale. “I’m not going to make age an issue in this campaign,” the 73-year-old president told his interlocutor. “I’m not going to exploit the youth and inexperience of my opponent for political gain.”

That line, which made Mondale himself laugh, put Reagan back on track in the race. The movie, not so much.

“History is never about when, why, how—it’s always about ‘who,’” says Voight’s Petrovich. Whatever historians think about it, we would have gladly taken a more incisive look at when, why, how, or anything else that would have given us a real glimpse, rather than a long, glowing advertisement, of who this man really was.

“Reagan,” a Showbiz Direct release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association “for violent content and smoking.” Running time: 135 minutes.