I’m looking forward to this one. I read Peter Morgan’s original play, but didn’t get to see it performed. Basically, the big question is how do you translate the play to the screen without altering the experience that’s been such a success so far?
Did they pull it off? One audience in Manhattan had a chance to see for themselves recently...
I thought you'd be interested in some early word on Frost/Nixon. I sent in a review of Baby Mama a few months back that you didn't use, but I'll reiterate that the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler pedigree is sullied. It's almost unwatchable in parts, and I'm a big fan of 30 Rock and UCB. Be forewarned.
Anyway...I saw Frost/Nixon last week in Manhattan (Union Square, in case you're looking for some kind of confirmation). Ron Howard was there, though he didn't emerge until after the focus group had concluded. He seemed more than willing to engage the huddle of fans who flooded him. I also noticed Harris Yulin (forever the Judge in Ghostbusters 2 to my twentysomething mind), who wasn't in the film, lingering around as well.
Anyway...the film is a solid but at times slight historical drama – no knockout but it fights a good fight and lands its share of solid punches. I was worried about a middleweight filmmaker like Howard getting his hands on Peter Morgan's play, which I haven't read or seen, but it's a satisfying film - a bit visually glossy, a bit surfacey at points (Michael Sheen's David Frost is less fully rounded than I expected), but competent and moving in minor bursts.
Frank Langella is very good - wearing very little make-up thankfully, he's nonetheless fully felt and fleshed out. His Nixon is competitive and guarded, but Langella makes him sympathetic - a former political fighter angling for one last twilight bout - without scrubbing him entirely clean of his...um...imperfections. That said, he isn't as entrenched as Hopkins, and this isn't Nixon the Mythic and Tragic. The inner fire is there, but it isn't raging.
I know you've seen the play, so I'll spare the details, but I'll say that I was hoping, for a brief moment, that Frost was going to eat dirt completely. He flubs the first 11 interview days, and I thought maybe, just maybe the film was going to be a study in one entertainment journalist's hubris coming up against a man twice his stature. That would've certainly made for a more interesting arc. Instead, nine of the interview days fly by in a too-quick montage that almost deflates any anticipation for that last confrontation and leaves Frost - who you keep hoping/expecting to break his paralysis a prize fighter - a shell of a character.
Sheen gives him something, but I'm not sure what, and he spends most of those interview scenes with a look of general unease, his eyes frozen and locked. I went with the 12th round showdown - its crafty, with both actors stepping up their games - but by that point, I didn't believe it. I took it less as Frost's last-minute competence and redemption than as Nixon conceding for his own reasons. And that, like Quiz Show, nobody or nothing won but the entertainment T.V. juggernaut still in its adolescence.
The film's only other glaring flaw is its framing device - a series of direct-to-camera interviews with its supporting players that offers some insight but is mostly an unnecessary and T.V. movie-ish crutch. It's pat and takes you out of the present tense drama. I hope they cut it, but no one seemed to mind.
Kevin Bacon is extraneous and flat, Sam Rockwell is feisty and the best thing besides Langella, and there's a subplot involving Frost's girlfriend that I didn't mind but my girlfriend thought just sat there.
The whole thing clocked in at just under two hours, and the moderator mentioned that Howard and the producers have reservations about the final scene - a nifty but perhaps too-neat play on "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". They'd do better to leave a small question mark at the end.
They seemed scared as well that political films have been treated as diseased this year and wanted thoughts on election year burnout. Frost/Nixon isn't short on parallels - deposed and reviled leader wrestling with his legacy in an entertainment-news culture looking for an easy quote to pin him with - but it's not unlike The Queen in seeming like a fairly benign and digestible historical drama.
I'd recommend it, even though my review, looking back, skews a bit negative. Take that as you will. I walked out satisfied, but it's not exactly a heady film. Hopefully the long interim before release will give them a chance to ignite the film's slower-burning passages. I have a feeling there will be only minor tweaking.
Have at me, forum lurkers. Spare me nothing.
If you use this, call me The National Boxer.
