Dennis Quaid’s ‘Reagan’ Is the Worst Movie of the Year
Directed by Sean McNamara, the artist behind 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite, and Baby Geniuses and the Treasure of Egypt and its follow-up Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby, Reagan lives up to its creator’s illustrious canon.
Describing this two-hour, 20-minute film (which has been sitting on the shelf for close to four years) as a hagiography is to understate its fawning celebration of its subject, who’s presented as not merely a charismatic actor and effective statesman but as God’s chosen warrior in a titanic battle between good and evil. Regardless of how you feel about Ronald Reagan the president, most will be united in finding this biopic a preachy, plodding, graceless groaner.
Reagan, which hits theaters Aug. 30, begins with the March 30, 1981, attempted assassination of the newly elected commander-in-chief by John Hinckley Jr.—a calamity that’s preceded by Reagan telling an AFL-CIO conference, “Our destiny is not our fate. It is our choice. You and your forebearers helped build this nation. Now help us rebuild it.” Left out of this scene is Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” remark, no doubt to avoid drawing parallels between its protagonist and Donald Trump, and it’s the first of innumerable instances in which McNamara and screenwriter Howard Klausner warp history for one-note lionization.