Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The American President Blu-ray Movie Review

Ms. Wade Goes to Washington, Finds True Love

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 28, 2012

Before Aaron Sorkin turned the White House into a weekly television drama with The West Wing, he first made it the setting for an unlikely romantic comedy in The American President. Reteaming with director Rob Reiner, whose helming of Sorkin's first screenplay, A Few Good Men (1992), resulted in a box office hit, Sorkin used the trappings of office and the perils of politics to erect the obstacles without which no movie romance can flourish. Along the way, Sorkin let his fictitious chief executive, a former history professor catapulted onto the national stage almost against his will, deliver a few well-phrased civics lessons pitched at the idealist level of the film classic that the heroine invokes when she first visits the White House: Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The reference was Sorkin's wink to the audience. He knew he was writing a fairy tale.

Still, Sorkin and Reiner like dressing up their stories in the disguise of realism. Although the president played by Michael Douglas in no way resembles former President Clinton, The American President bears the unmistakable stamp of the first Clinton administration in the issues that roil the White House staff and echo through the election year during which the story takes place. All one has to do is compare the film to the election year when the Blu-ray is being released to see how much has changed. The domestic economy that is such a matter of current concern is barely touched upon in the film, because seventeen years ago the nation enjoyed widespread prosperity. The Middle East was a concern, as it had been for decades, but the threat of terrorism is never discussed, nor is the country engaged in any military actions abroad. Old media still dominates the news cycle, and the internet and blogosphere have yet to become the powerful forces for shaping opinion that will make them transformative in just a few years.

All these elements give The American President a dated quality that should help sustain its fantasy element, but it may not yet be dated enough. The two political footballs tossed back and forth in the plot—and they're both McGuffins—are global warming and gun control, two issues still guaranteed to fray tempers and trigger heated debate, even though they're not currently at (or even near) the top of the national agenda. For any viewer with passionate feelings about either or both issues, their treatment in The American President is likely to be a distraction. For anyone who can look past the talking points, the film is an entertaining, well-constructed and often amusing variation on the rituals of adult courtship.

President Andrew Shepherd (Douglas) is entering the fourth year of his first term, having been elected by an extremely thin margin. One question that haunts him is how much of his victory is owed to a "sympathy vote" elicited by the death of his wife from cancer shortly before the election. The non-stop demands of office have filled the void, and the President is comforted in his personal life by the task of raising his teenage daughter, Lucy (Shawna Waldron).

Currently Shepherd's numbers are high, but he and chief of staff A.J. MacInerney (Martin Sheen, Sorkin's future president on The West Wing) have pinned his reelection hopes on passage of a comprehensive crime bill. They figure that every senator and congressman will want to be part of the process, now that the President's popularity is surging. The domestic policy advisor, Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox), wants to take a stronger stand on banning handguns, but Shepherd feels the time isn't right. (Party affiliations aren't stressed in the film, but there are enough references to make it clear that Shepherd is a Democrat.)

As he would later do in The West Wing, Sorkin depicts the Oval Office as a non-stop parade of people asking for the President's attention, and director Reiner stages these entrances and exits for comic payoff later in the film, when Shepherd's romantic issues become the focus of the story. In addition to Lewis and A.J., he includes a press secretary, Robin McCall (the reliable Anna Deavere Smith); a deputy chief of staff, Leon Kodak (David Paymer); a secretary, Mrs. Chapil (the late Anne Haney); and an intense personal aide, Janey Basdin (Samantha Mathis, all glasses and straight, severe hair). Secret Service are everywhere. One of the charms of Douglas' performance as Shepherd is the way he conveys the man's bemusement that it takes so many people to provide for the needs of one individual—and then his frustration when those needs cease to follow any recognized script and the entire staff behaves like deer in the headlights.

Into this machine of wheels within wheels arrives Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), a high-powered lobbyist retained by the Global Defense Council or "GDC", an environmental organization that feels slighted by the White House and wants Sydney to get them taken seriously. On her first day, she attends a GDC meeting with A.J. at which she laces into his boss as "the chief executive of fantasy land", unaware that President Shepherd has slipped quietly into the room behind her. Shepherd is charmed not only by her forthrightness, but also by her quick recovery after he announces his presence and invites her to a private sidebar. Before anyone knows quite how it happened, Sydney has been invited to be the President's official escort at a state dinner in honor of the French President and his wife (Clement von Franckenstein and Efrat Lavie), where her turn around the dance floor with Shepherd makes the front page of every paper. And then the real headaches begin.

Shepherd's chief rival is Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss, displaying a genuine flair as a career politician). As soon as the President acquires a girlfriend, Rumson senses an opportunity to shift the campaign to a discussion of "character". Should we call her "the First Mistress"? he asks suggestively. To the horror of his staff, Shepherd refuses to respond, claiming (somewhat incredibly in a modern media world) that his personal life is his own business. But as his poll numbers slip, so does congressional support for his signature crime legislation and with it his reelection prospects. Now Shepherd has to reconsider the support he initially promised Sydney for her environmentalist client. Suddenly the personal and the political are on a collision course.

Conflicts between romantic desire and professional aspirations have been a fertile source of comedic inspiration since at least Adam's Rib (a clip of which appears briefly on TV in the film), but it's a difficult mixture to blend successfully. Among other essentials, you need a screenwriter of Sorkin's caliber, which is rare enough, but you also need an actress who can convincingly portray the moxie and intellectual capacity to face off against her romantic counterpart while maintaining the emotional openness to make the love story credible. Katherine Hepburn made it look easy (though obviously it isn't), and Rosalind Russell managed it in His Girl Friday. Annette Bening works in the same great tradition, and her performance as Sydney Ellen Wade balances perfectly with that of Michael Douglas, who smartly underplays Andrew Shepherd's quick-wittedness so that he doesn't always seem to be one-upping everyone in the room (which his status as president would easily let him do). The film's real story is about how this pair, who are obviously made for each other, finally connect across the barriers of their unusual jobs, just as the President finally figures out his own unique way to give a woman flowers by the end of the film.

The American President Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warner's 2004 DVD release of The American President was not enhanced for 16:9 widescreen; I don't have definitive information about the 2008 re-release on DVD, but the film's fans have been looking forward to Blu-ray treatment so that Oscar winner John Seale's (The English Patient) widescreen Panavision cinematography can be seen in all its glory and production designer Lilly Kilvert's recreation of the White House can be seen in its full detail.

The image on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is generally good, with some concerns that place it a notch or two below the level of quality we've come to expect from Warner catalog releases. The image is clean and well-detailed, with deep blacks and a saturated palette of rich colors befitting the majesty of the nation's capital and the executive branch. There is no indication of detail filtering, and the film's grain structure is fine but still visible. Although Warner has used a BD-25, the lack of extras and the limited audio options allow the film to reside on the available digital real estate without compression issues.

The fly in the ointment is a small amount of artificial sharpening, visible in an occasional but slight edge halo. The haloing itself is sufficiently fleeting that most viewers probably won't notice it, but the presence of such sharpening lessens the film-like appearance of the transfer generally. Digital "enhancement" of this nature is a leftover from the DVD era, and its return in any transfer for Blu-ray is unwelcome. Possibly some colorist felt the need to "stabilize" this image from an era before the advent of digital intermediates, but if so more sharpening was applied than was needed to compensate for an issue in the raw scan. Maybe all those complaints on the internet about pre-DI films being "soft" or not sharp enough have done some damage after all.

The American President Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The American President was released with a 5.1 soundtrack, which is here reproduced in DTS-HD MA, but it is not a showy or elaborate mix. We get surround noises appropriate to various environments (e.g., the state dinner at which the President and Sydney have their first "date") and an occasional panning effect such as the President's helicopter flying in, but otherwise the surrounds are limited to supporting the front array. Dialogue is very clear, and the sprightly score by the versatile Marc Shaiman provides the right touch of storybook magic to the "happily ever after" proceedings.

The American President Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than the film's theatrical trailer (SD; 1.85:1, non-enhanced; 2:58), the disc contains no extras.

The American President Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Authors often choose names with meaningful overtones for their lead characters, and more than one viewer has probably noticed that Sorkin named his fictitious president after someone who herds a flock of sheep to protect them from harm. Someone of a different persuasion listening to President Shepherd's climactic press conference might conclude that this is how Sorkin sees America: as a nation of sheep in need of saving. It strikes me, though, that the name "Shepherd" is ironic, because what the film actually shows is how an occupant of the Oval Office spends much of his life being "shepherded" from place to place, meeting to meeting, crisis to crisis, responsibility to responsibility. He may be the most powerful man in the world, but he can't even make a purchase on his own, because all of his credit cards are locked in a vault in Virginia. The story (and the comedy) result when the human being inside that bubble manages to crack it open a bit and let in something—and someone—from the real world outside. And yes, the result is messy. Isn't it always? Recommended, with minor reservations about the video quality.