This is How Movies Should Be Made

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

As a historical documentary on Theodore Roosevelt, this is a pretty good pair of DVDs. It's thorough, informative, and really captures the spirit of the age.But the director of photography must have been suffering an inner ear disorder: every scene reflecting a still photograph (from the turn of the century)is displayed in a "slowly spinning" moving frame. One image turns to the right, the next to the left. As if at sea, the viewer rocks one way, then the other, as the screen alternates rotating views of what should have been stationary images.For content? a 9 For seasickness? a 3 Averaged out to a 6.

Volume 1 covers his life before he became president. Volume 2 covers all his terms as president, the time between, and his life from presidency to death. The story is engaging, well-written, and seems to be very thorough. The narratives by Richard Dreyfuss are distracting, though, because his voice is so recognizable. Anyone not familiar with Dreyfuss won't suffer from that distraction. I was surprised to learn the background of the Panama Canal that had not been covered by other documentaries, as well as by the relationships to the tycoons of the era, the changes in law, politics, & society all due directly to Teddy's unique style of administration. It was also interesting to learn how he singlehandedly cleaned up corruption in the NYPD.