I wrote up a big, multi-page review, but no one wants to wade through all that crap. So I'll summarize. The movie is very well-made, but it feels a little...hollow. It seems more like a well-made PBS documentary that an honest-to-God movie. It even has talking heads between scenes! But they're fake talking heads, so I don't know what to believe. Am I watching a movie, a documentary, or a mockumentary?
Frank Langella does a fine job as Richard Nixon; he can invest lines like "You do any fornicating last night?" with more gravitas than they deserve. Langella's Nixon is like the cranky, vaguely off-putting relative who always ruins Thanksgiving dinner by talking endlessly about politics. That's a compliment, by the way. His voice is a little distracting; it's a hoarse, guttural baritone that sounds like he's choking on decades of swallowed bile. But you'll eventually get used to it. Heck, by the end of the movie, you might even be talking that way.
The real problem lies with the other half of the title, Michael Sheen's David Frost. Frost, a British talk-show host whose nearest American equivalent might be Regis Philbin, is too glib to make a convincing foil for Nixon. That's how he's played in the beginning of the movie, at least. Things change halfway through. He suddenly transforms from a blow-dried celebrity hound into a master debater. How? We don't get the slightest inkling.
That's "Frost/Nixon" in a nutshell. Like Frost, it looks good and it sounds good, but there's not enough there there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment