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How sad is this?

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I was never a fan of Ronald Reagan or his wife Nancy, but they surely deserved better than this endless, shallow, watery TV movie.Normally when I do an IMDb review I focus on the story, the stars, and the emotional acting moments. But in this case I just have to say that the technical issues ruined the film. I have never, ever seen worse hair and makeup in my life than what's on display here. In the first scene you see Ronald Reagan circa 1987, as a dazed and befuddled old man. Then they flash back to handsome young Reagan the movie star, driving down the road in a big car in 1949. And yet somehow he looked YOUNGER in 1987!!! That was the first time I ever cracked up laughing over bad makeup.It was even more horrible with Nancy Reagan. I never liked the real Nancy, and I never thought she was pretty. But she was always perfectly put together in public, to the point of looking like a wax dummy. By contrast, Judy Davis in 90% of this film, looks like she just fell out of bed. I have never in any movie looked at an actress and thought, "I could have done her hair and makeup better than that." What the hell happened? Another issue in the movie was aging. Ronald Reagan's health issues were a major part of the plot, so we know he's aging, even though his makeup doesn't suggest it. And at least Josh Brolin shows him slowing down, mentally and physically. But while her makeup is terrible and her hair is a mess, (totally unlike real life) mean, bitchy Nancy never seems to age! There's scene after scene of Judy Davis strutting around in tight-fitting dresses like a woman of thirty, when she's playing a woman meant to be seventy years old! Did the director not explain this vital fact to Judy Davis? The story line was okay, I thought. They don't pretend Reagan was a genius, but they don't make him into a monster either. Nancy's coldness and cruelty was a little overdone, with not enough explanation of why Reagan picked her over dozens of other willing starlets. Oddly enough, the one truly standout performance was Zoie Palmer as the Reagan's beautiful and rebellious daughter, Patti Davis.I'd definitely like to see the TV movie on her life!

Just like the recent Hitchcock disaster, this was yet another movie trying to depict the man as a total imbecile and the wife as all the brains behind everything. Totally over simplistic, totally stereotypical , all the clichés and the undercurrent of sexist man hating misandry underneath it all, as we always get with the radically liberal Hollywood. Reagan according to this was a totally clueless puppet who did nothing and never put nay thought into anything. His wife was really the president and knew everything about everything. Identical to Hitchcock movie where Helen Mirren strangled the life out of the whole thing and even claimed to strangle Janet leigh too. Utter poppycock, Hitchcock was a genius, period.

If you're reading this, you probably are aware of the controversy that kept this mini-series off of CBS. At the time, this movie was made out to be a character assassination. After watching it, I realize that's not what it was, and why Reagan supporters hated this movie. The problem with this mini-series is that it's the dreaded docu-drama. Any insightful viewer who watches "The Reagans" will be left asking themselves how truthful this movie really was. This is the problem with the docu-drama in general. It's not a documentary, so it doesn't have to be held to any standard of fact (though Michael Moore somehow gets his movies labeled as documentaries, go figure).So this ends up being a hodge-podge of things that have been inferred about the Reagans' lives from tell-alls and public record. The script of this film tries to neatly fit tidbits of the Reagans' lives into 15 second exchanges of dialogue. For example, it's been long known that Nancy is/was interested in astrology. The way we get introduced to this is having Nancy get told about astrology at a party in 1958 or something like that. It's just a little too neatly put together. It's similar with the dialogue between Reagan and his political advisor's. Bottom line is, it's worth watching, though is too long, like mini-series always are. James Brolin does a very nice job of showing us the Reagan we all know. He also takes it past the Rich Little level -- he tweaks the character to show us someone that's just a bit deeper than the man we saw on television. At the end, you'll probably be left thinking it was entertaining, maybe informative, but you'll want to read a more detailed biography that might be a little more rock solid in fact. Did Reagan really not want to get out of bed on the day of his inauguration? Once again.. very hard to believe.

Ronald Reagan, 'The Gipper,' a supporting actor in the famous Knute Rockne story was catapulted out of a semi - historical TV show about the old west into Presidential politics by THE SPEECH, a campaign speech in favour of Barry Goldwater in 1964 in which Reagan managed throughout to omit Goldwater's name. Goldwater went down to an humiliating defeat but Reagan professing much of the Goldwater rhetoric went on to become the most popular president of the 20th century.The made for TV bio picture does fair coverage of the meteoric rise to power of Ronald Reagan and does honour to both Mr & Mrs Reagan. It covers most of the highlights well: election as Governor, the campaign for President against hapless Carter, the assassination attempt in which Reagan beat Techumseh's curse, the end of the cold war, Iran-contra affair and the departure at the end of the term.Comparable films: Backstairs at The White House.