Good start, but then it gets ruined

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I know Ronald Reagan intimately. I lived in Texas when he was President. I am a news junkie, so I followed every twist and turn of his campaign and his Presidency. Let me tell you every detail and nuance of this movie is an out and out lie. It's as I said Fake History. It was so boring too, the movie I mean. The reality was exciting, packed with incident, and it was exuberant and optimistic. The man brought America back from the dead, and you felt alive, excited, watching it happen. If the movie told the real story it would have been as exciting and inspirational as hell. So in short, Ronald Reagan's economic legislation set America on a ten year path of growing GDP and 30 million good new jobs. For ten years after the US never had a down month in GDP. At the same time, he brought the Soviet Union down without firing a shot. Communist Russia was a fearsome enemy, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and an imperialist ideology with the stated goal of conquering the whole world. Just think of the Nazis, but with a hammer and sickle instead of a swastika. Nothing in the movie gave him any credit for his successes. Instead it dwelled on a visit to the wrong German cemetery and selling arms to Iran for hostages, and giving money to the Contras to fight the Sandanistas in El Salvador contrary to a Democratic law against it. Barack Insane Obama has done it 1000 times. So sad.

I was never a fan of Ronald Reagan or his wife Nancy, but they surely deserved better than this endless, shallow, watery TV movie.Normally when I do an IMDb review I focus on the story, the stars, and the emotional acting moments. But in this case I just have to say that the technical issues ruined the film. I have never, ever seen worse hair and makeup in my life than what's on display here. In the first scene you see Ronald Reagan circa 1987, as a dazed and befuddled old man. Then they flash back to handsome young Reagan the movie star, driving down the road in a big car in 1949. And yet somehow he looked YOUNGER in 1987!!! That was the first time I ever cracked up laughing over bad makeup.It was even more horrible with Nancy Reagan. I never liked the real Nancy, and I never thought she was pretty. But she was always perfectly put together in public, to the point of looking like a wax dummy. By contrast, Judy Davis in 90% of this film, looks like she just fell out of bed. I have never in any movie looked at an actress and thought, "I could have done her hair and makeup better than that." What the hell happened? Another issue in the movie was aging. Ronald Reagan's health issues were a major part of the plot, so we know he's aging, even though his makeup doesn't suggest it. And at least Josh Brolin shows him slowing down, mentally and physically. But while her makeup is terrible and her hair is a mess, (totally unlike real life) mean, bitchy Nancy never seems to age! There's scene after scene of Judy Davis strutting around in tight-fitting dresses like a woman of thirty, when she's playing a woman meant to be seventy years old! Did the director not explain this vital fact to Judy Davis? The story line was okay, I thought. They don't pretend Reagan was a genius, but they don't make him into a monster either. Nancy's coldness and cruelty was a little overdone, with not enough explanation of why Reagan picked her over dozens of other willing starlets. Oddly enough, the one truly standout performance was Zoie Palmer as the Reagan's beautiful and rebellious daughter, Patti Davis.I'd definitely like to see the TV movie on her life!

James Brolin and Judy Davis should have won Emmys for their performances as President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis Reagan from their first meeting to the end of their two terms in the White House. Brolin reminds me of why everybody liked Reagan. He seemed easy-going and he could talk to anybody. When Michael flunks out of school, he doesn't bash or criticize him but gets him a tutor and help with Nancy. The Reagan household is a blended one. He was married to actress, Jane Wyman, who was an Oscar winner and on Falcon Crest during his years of Presidency. Sadly, we never see Jane Wyman at all. I didn't know that the younger Patti and Ron Jr. didn't know about Michael and Maureen until Michael came to stay with them. Judy Davis as Nancy Reagan is divine in this role. She really portrays her as a wife, mother, and above all else Ron's best friend and partner in life. They really were an extraordinary couple in marriage. When he actually did die, Nancy didn't want to leave his coffin. It was a heartbreaking goodbye.

In the aftermath of Reagan's passing, the entire media is hurriedly engaged in rewriting the truth about this highly-flawed but interesting man. Virtually all of his significant errors, short-comings, and failures are being sanitized, and as his canonization completes itself the myths that remains will be a sham. Every citizen who values the truth should buy this DVD now and watch it before it disappears, just like the truths it reveals are disappearing.In this remarkably factual production we learn about Reagan the actor, capable and pleasant. We also learn that he snitched off his pals to the HUAC. We learn that during the war he made movies in Culver City for the Army, and later had trouble finding work, finally winding up as GE's spokesman for Death Valley Days on Television, a medium he always held in contempt.We watch his disdain for the IRS grow as his income skyrockets, and how it matures into a complete repudiation of the Federal Government. And as his resentment of the Federal Government grows, we witness how the shadowy rich seduce him into becoming their tax-cutting puppet, from the Governship of California through 2 terms in the White House. Most importantly, we learn the truth about the most dysfunctional family ever to inhabit the White House, based largely on Reagan's shocking disinterest in his own flesh and blood. Mainly, however, we learn the truth about Nancy. Let's just say that the truth as it is revealed here eclipses everything that you though you knew about this shrewd and manipulative woman.This film contains the truths about Reagan that the Modern Cons don't want you to know. The source-work for this film is beyond reproach, with most of it coming from the writings of Reagans children first published years ago.Production wise, it's great. James Brolin is uncanny in his capture of the Reagan personna, and he delivers a performance that is charitable and kind. I think it's his best ever. The other performances are equally as good.Bottom Line: The truth is out there, and this is it.