The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 10, 2020

If your knowledge of Teddy Roosevelt is based more on, say, the Night at the Museum 3-Movie Collection rather than Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, you may find the 1983 documentary The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt enjoyable enough, even if it can tend to only skim the surface as it chronicles the life of one of the more incredible characters in the annals of American history. While it looks like this piece did have at least a limited theatrical exhibition (according to the IMDb), this plays like an “old school” television documentary a lot of the time, from its (era appropriate) “full frame” aspect ratio to its use of so-called “dramatic recreations” where a series of actors (including, commendably, several actual Roosevelts) portraying various members of the notable family. The documentary’s chief allure is probably its vast array of rare archival video, though, which at least gives a view of Teddy at various points in his remarkable life.

But for anyone who has seen the typically excellent Ken Burns documentary about several members of the Roosevelt clan in addition to Teddy, notably Franklin Delano and his wife Eleanor, it's perhaps notable that Burns' piece, despite its apparently wider focus, may actually offer more real details about Teddy's life and maybe especially psychology than The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt does, though of course it's important to remember that Burns' longer form piece has a little more room to "stretch out", as it were. But even this admittedly more compact piece tends to gloss over seemingly hugely formative experiences like Roosevelt's mother and first wife dying in the same house on the same day.

Director Harrison Engle is on hand here in a brief interview included on the disc as a supplement, and he mentions he "took some heat" for the dramatic reenactments the documentary offers, but I have to say for me personally they weren't especially egregious. Many, maybe even most, of them are simply "visuals" that accompany voiceover (sometimes with actors admittedly portraying various characters), though there are some scenes with dialogue, as with a brief vignette showing Roosevelt taking the presidential oath of office after McKinley's death.

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt is presented on Blu-ray (BD-R) courtesy of Flicker Alley with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.32:1. While this sports a "restoration" credit at the very end, there's no information included with this release (that I could find, anyway) that speaks to the provenance of the source element, and this certainly has the look of video, and at times upscaled video, to my eyes. Things are rather soft and times pretty waxy looking throughout this presentation, and some moments show significant artifacting (see screenshot 7 for just one example). The archival video is often incredibly ragged looking, as probably should be expected, but many of the stills are still reasonably sharp and well detailed.

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that is awash in John Philip Sousa's music (in the interview with Harrison Engle included as a supplement on this disc, he talks about wanting to make the documentary seem like a band concert). Sousa's music is appropriately energetic and even bombastic in this presentation, but I found the mix itself to be a little less than optimal, with the supposed "underscore" coming close to drowning out narrator George C. Scott on occasion. That said, fidelity is fine and I noticed no issues with regard to any age related wear and tear. The interview with Engle does have a weird persistent low frequency hum on its audio track which some may find distracting.

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Director Harrison Engle (1080i; 14:05) offers some interesting background on the piece, including Engle's long trek to actually get it financed, as well as some of the help he received from both Roosevelt relatives and those tasked with preserving Roosevelt's heritage. Per my comments in the audio section above, this has a kind of annoying intermittent low frequency hum for some reason.


• Roosevelt's 1905 Inaugural Address (480i; 2:52) is basically a text crawl with some introductory comments and then a text reproduction of Roosevelt's speech. This perhaps unfortunately plays to John Philip Sousa's "The Liberty Bell", which my hunch is many folks are going to automatically associate with Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Complete Series.

The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you haven't invested the several hours necessary to wend your way through Ken Burns' overarching The Roosevelts, you could probably do worse than spending an hour and a half or so with The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt. This documentary never really tries to dig very deep, but it trots out its datapoints with clarity and some excellent use of archival video. Video quality of this release is probably not going to pass muster with devoted videophiles, though audio, aside from some passing prioritization issues, sounds fine, for those considering a purchase.