Donald Trump’s cameo in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was the greatest ever appearance by a president, fictional or otherwise, by any actor in the history of cinema. Everyone agrees. I had a whole bunch of people look in to it and they all said Trump was the best, he has terrific ability and even though it was a very short scene with Macauley Culkin, he still had the best words. Trump should have won the Best Actor Oscar for that but Al Pacino rigged it so that he won instead. Sad!
There are a lot of actors who have taken on the titanic role of playing American presidents in the movies, but how do their approval ratings fare amongst the public? I took to Amazon to delve deep through users’ reviews of some of the more memorable big-screen presidents.
One of the first names that springs to mind is Morgan Freeman playing the fictional president Tom Beck in Deep Impact. I searched over one thousand Amazon reviews of Deep Impact and could not find a single critical review of Freeman’s efforts. For example:
“The producers usually blend in some love story, sex scandal, and other feminine issues to make it appeal to non-scientific audiences, but they forget that the main reason why most men want to risk their life to go into space and face a baren empty space is to escape these relational issues…. I am a real fan of Morag Freeman, he was brilliant here and save the movie.”
The thing is, the idea that a comet would be heading for Earth would have to be a hoax perpetrated by China so that they can steal shower gel from Trump Hotels. I really enjoyed Deep Impact, though, and at least it proves that the media were lying when they said Obama was the first black president.
Independence Day finds Bill Pullman as fictional President Thomas J. Whitmore. Most of the Amazon reviews of Pullman’s performance are positive, but not all. Lee said:
“Bill Pullman stars as the most unconvincingly authoritative president since Bill Clinton. So much so, that you almost expect to see him being joylessly fellated by the alien queen whilst toking on a cosmic fatty boom batty.”
‘Film Buff’ took issue with the idea that the president would personally engage in combat with aliens:
“the president(bill pullman)suddenly aquires a “rambo complex” and decides to fly around in a fighter jet, joining the “clown” pilot, the alcoholic pilot and the rest . since when does the president of the u.s fly around in a fighter jet? moronic!! could you emagine president barrack obama in a fighter jet during a world war?!!” Now, if it were Trump, he’d build a spacewall to prevent the aliens from invading and he’d make them pay for it.
One of the most respected movie portrayals of an American president in film appears to have been that of Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon. Mr S. J. Downing writes:
“For his part, Frank Langella, despite his unfortunate and highly ironic resemblance to Leonid Brezhnev, imbues Richard Nixon with enough wounded classical gravitas that from the word go we dare not dismiss him as a two-dimensional crook.”
It just shows you how the media spin things. It’s okay for Langella’s American president to resemble his Russian counterpart, but when it’s Trump the media don’t like it.
Apart from Trump, Daniel Day-Lewis gave the most critically acclaimed presidential performance as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln. Archer1941 said:
“First of all, Daniel Day-Lewis’s Abraham Lincoln is probably the closest any of us will ever get to seeing the 16th president in the flesh. He is totally believable.” I agree that the chances of any of us meeting Lincoln are fairly slim.
Tom Wilkinson got some good reviews for his outing as Lyndon B. Johnson in Selma, but I hear the ratings are down now and nobody has gone to watch the film at the theatre since its run ended. Reviewing the DVD of Selma, Roger L was left unhappy:
“Not what I expected, I was expecting the Idris Elba film now I know that Is called Luther” Roger L was disappointed to find he’d gotten something he didn’t want, so a lot of voters can probably relate to him.
Jamie Flook lives in Bristol, U.K., where everyone’s totally happy with their political leaders.
