Making up Reagan

Perhaps now is a good moment in time for the release of a movie profile about a very popular Republican President, and perhaps it’s fitting and understandable in these times that Reagan (Lionsgate, on Blu-ray $24.99 as of Nov. 19, 2024) is a superficial, sanitized, feel-good portrait of the former California Governor who defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Carter to serve two consecutive terms from 1981-89.

Dennis Quaid portrays the 40th U.S. President with Penelope Ann Miller playing his second and long-time wife and First Lady Nancy Reagan. Also appearing are Jon Voight as a former KGB agent, Kevin Dillon as studio president Jack Warner, and Mena Suvari as Reagan’s first actress wife Jane Wyman. Here’s a video trailer…

There’s a lot of artificiality in this film; the story seems as made-up as the actors during this presentation of the life and accomplishments of the former actor. It seems like every single cast member was required to wear obvious face-changing make-up and hair, starting with 70 year-old Quaid, who portrays Reagan from a young man through his late 80s. Sixty year-old Penelope Ann Miller also gets the aging/de-aging treatment, portraying Nancy from about ages 30 – 80. Eighty-five year-old Voight is seen in glimpses, also across decades of time as the storyteller, a totally random fictious character pretending to be a stalker of Reagan through most of his life, starting his narrative with Reagan as a child and later a lifeguard who apparently attracted young girls to feign drowning in order to be rescued by him. He constantly refers to Reagan as “The Crusader.” Even many of the officials sitting around conference room tables in Russia and the U.S. appear to have make-up caked on and hair to be highly dyed and shaped.

Voight’s KGB agent takes us though Reagan’s life as if he’s presenting a PowerPoint slide presentation of selected significant moments with only video clips of each one. Despite the movie being nearly 2 1/2-hours, it feels like no scene lasts more than about 60-seconds. It’s almost like the director simply dramatized the photo op moments that are shown of the real Reagan during the closing credits. There’s no context, no depth. The script feels like it is simply bullet points. Any emotional attachment would have to be drawn from one’s own memory rather than what is being viewed on the screen.

The Blu-ray format provided an opportunity to allow viewers to explore Reagan in more depth with bonus features showing the actual person and/or behind-the-scenes of the making of the movie — heck, coulda been a feature-length documentary on the make-up alone. But there are no bonus features.

There is, however, a closed-caption option for subtitles, which offers a humorous mistake that must have been overlooked in the QC process: 45-minutes into the movie, rancher and California State Supreme Court associate justice William P. Clark is riding horses with outgoing Gov. Reagan on Reagan’s ranch. Suggesting that Reagan should consider a run for President in order to prevent the spread of Communism, Clark says (according to the captions): “They taunt, unfortunately, won’t last. The Soviets are here to stay.”
Of course, it should have read: “Détente, unfortunately, won’t last,” détente being the term applied to the uneasy de-escalating of weapons build-up by the Soviets and Americans during Nixon’s administration.

— By Scott Hettrick