The American President Movie Trailer. Once upon a time, there was a leader of the free world who was lonely. As a widower in the White House, Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) could not easily date. So President Shepherd had to content himself with striding briskly through the corridors of power, basking in a 63 percent approval rating and looking after his cheerful adolescent daughter. The daughter had a trombone and could play “Hail to the Chief.”
Then Andrew met Sydney (Annette Bening). She was powerful and beautiful but also an old-fashioned girl, the kind who could sit around in pajamas fretting with her sister about her love life. Somehow, when Andrew overheard himself called “the Chief Executive of Fantasyland” by this lovely lobbyist, a Cinderella who fought boldly against global warming, he was smitten. But it would have been difficult to take her out for a milkshake with two straws, so Andrew brought Sydney to a gala State dinner instead.
When the press saw the President wheeling a date across the dance floor, there was the inevitable furor. “President Finds Romance at State Dinner” proclaimed one hard-hitting headline — in case there were any further doubts about whether “The American President” is a fairy tale. Indeed, the Presidency receives such a fabulous face lift from Rob Reiner’s glossy new romantic comedy that Mr. Douglas can probably expect write-in votes a year from now. And Mr. Reiner, successfully blending old-time Hollywood allure with a new level of craftsmanship (the House of Representatives has been digitally supplied by Industrial Light and Magic), gives this frothy Washington fantasy a lightweight and lighthearted charm.
With great looks, a dandy supporting cast, a zinger-filled screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men”) and Mr. Douglas twinkling merrily in the Oval Office, “The American President” is sunny enough to make the real Presidency pale by comparison. Not even when regretfully giving an order to bomb Libya does Mr. Douglas’s Andrew make this look like a hard job. Though the film calls for Andrew to espouse safely liberal causes, which he does less gracefully than he woos Sydney, this President rarely seems to have politics on his mind. The general public seldom turns up on camera, thus heightening the film’s comfortably cloistered air.
However easy this film makes it look to be Commander in Chief, “The American President” makes it clear that keeping the fizz in happily escapist comedy is tricky. Despite the presence of Frank Capra 3d as first assistant director and a nod to his grandfather in the dialogue (Sydney, first visiting the White House on business: “I’m trying to savor the Capraesque quality”), this film can’t match the blitheness that was possible in more innocent times.
Ms. Bening, so much better playing vixen roles (as in “The Grifters”), is given the impossible job of delivering both heavyweight professionalism and an adorableness that sets the whole Shepherd Administration reeling. Carole Lombard could have managed this, but Ms. Bening isn’t the contemporary actress for the job.
Still, taken with a grapefruit-sized grain of salt, “The American President” is mostly sleek and buoyant in ways that have very nearly gone out of style. Mr. Reiner, at the top of his comic form during the film’s unencumbered first hour, sustains a bright look and a snappy, amusing pace. It’s no small measure of this comedy’s charm that when Andrew begins courting Sydney, Mr. Douglas seems beguilingly shy about women in ways that are not exactly basic to his usual movie image.
“Lucy, is this O.K., my having dinner with a lady?” he asks his daughter (Shawna Waldron). Since children know best in most American films these days, Lucy then reassures him: “Dad, it’s cool. Just go for it.”
“The American President” isn’t too squeaky-clean to find Sydney eventually sleeping in the White House (and mingling awkwardly with Andrew’s staff during an especially funny 5 A.M. scene). But it spins out an endless, bashful buildup to this phase of the courtship, even staging a first kiss in front of a display of Presidential china. And it hits quicksand over the question of pillow talk, failing to acknowledge that there’s anything wrong with Sydney’s lobbying the President after hours. The movie is otherwise too smart to be playing so dumb.
So it’s a relief to find that other aspects of this comedy are much more savvy, especially the terrific byplay among razor-sharp Presidential advisers. To wit (at a holiday party): “It’s Christmas.” “It’s Christmas?” “Yeah. You didn’t get the memo?”
The supporting cast is led by Michael J. Fox, who according to production notes modeled his Chief Domestic Adviser on both George Stephanopoulos and Jiminy Cricket. (“It’s always the young guy in my job who winds up doing 18 months in Danbury Minimum Security Prison,” he complains.)
Like David Paymer as the Presidential pollster, he has made good use of time spent studying the real thing. Samantha Mathis and Anna Deveare Smith are also on staff, less conspicuously, and a gruff Martin Sheen is surprisingly funny as the President’s old friend and Chief of Staff. Richard Dreyfuss glowers evilly as the political opponent who would like to rain on Andrew and Sydney’s parade.
One of the film’s big stars is also Lilly Kilvert’s production design. Explaining why she brightened certain colors in the Oval Office, Ms. Kilvert has said she wanted to make it “look less like a big marshmallow on screen.” Presidential image-making may never be the same.
The American President (1995)
Directed by: Rob Reiner
Starring: Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Anna Deavere Smith, Samantha Mathis, Shawna Waldron, David Paymer, Richard Dreyfuss, Anne Haney, Nina Siemaszko
Screenplay by: Aaron Sorkin
Production Design by: Lilly Kilvert
Cinematography by: John Seale
Film Editing by: Robert Leighton
Costume Design by: Gloria Gresham
Set Decoration by: Karen O’Hara
Art Direction by: John Warnke
Music by: Marc Shaiman
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some strong language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures (USA and Canada), Universal Pictures (International)
Release Date: November 17, 1995
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