Jack and I enjoyed Bill Murray's delightful turn as Franklin D. Roosevelt entertaining the first British monarchs to visit America. The photography and period details are just right, from the shiny 1930s cars with wide white wall tires to the Bayer aspirin tin in the president's desk. Murray (last blogged in Moonrise Kingdom) has been deservedly nominated for a Golden Globe for this work. Olivia Colman has already won the British Independent Film Award for Supporting Actress (last year she won Best Actress for Tyrannosaur, which I didn't see) for playing Queen Elizabeth, mother of the current Queen; and Royal Shakespeare actor Samuel West is good and funny as King George VI (also played by Colin Firth last year in The King's Speech). Laura Linney's (nominated for Oscars for You Can Count on Me (2000), Kinsey (2004), and The Savages (2007); I also liked Dave (1993), The Truman Show (1998), The Life of David Gale (2003), Man of the Year (2006), loved The Squid and the Whale (2005), and three seasons of The Big C--its fourth and final season will be sometime this year) mousy Daisy isn't such a pleasure, although her voiceover is helpful. I'm sorry to say that only a little research has taught me that screenwriter Richard Nelson (wrote one other feature, not known to me) and director Roger Michell (covered in Morning Glory) have wildly embellished the truth of the matter (caution, spoilers in this link) (and here's some historical perspective without spoilers).
Reviews have not been kind (39% critics, 36 audiences on rottentomatoes) and, in fact, the friends we ran into at yesterday's opening night show didn't like it either. But we did! And regular babetteflix readers know that we don't like everything.
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