When the big-budget movie celebrating Ronald Reagan’s life and presidency hit theaters around Labor Day, it instantly became controversial.
Movie critics hated Reagan. On the Rotten Tomatoes review site, Reagan currently earns a positive treatment from 18 percent out of 67 reviews by critics.
By contrast, the Rotten Tomatoes measure of audience appreciation (“Popcornmeter”) currently gives the film a 98 percent “fresh” score based on more than 5,000 verified film attendees. Reagan also scored big on two theatrical exit-polling sites, earning an “A” grade from CinemaScore and 4.5 stars from PostTrak.
Who is right? The critics who called Reagan everything from “the worst film of the year” to “a children’s story for the adult diaper set”? Or the audience who cheered Dennis Quaid’s highly realistic portrayal of the Gipper and helped it earn $30 million at the box office?
Many Americans shy away from theaters in the post-Covid world we live in either for cost reasons or because they are disenchanted with what Hollywood puts there. So there is a potentially large audience for the digital-download version of Reagan that is being made available today. It will be on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and others.
The movie tells the story of Reagan’s life from age eleven to age 83, as seen through the eyes of Viktor Petrovich, a KGB agent who is assigned to observe Reagan’s career from the 1940s through the 1980s. Petrovich constantly warns Moscow that Reagan is “a Crusader” who could do grave damage to the Soviet Empire. But he is largely ignored — until it is too late.
National Review writers were divided on the film. I loved it, and Rich Lowry called it “a fitting tribute.” Phil Klein was less enthusiastic, and Jack Butler concluded “its substance is, at best, a stilted montage of Reagan’s life.”
Now you, Reagan fans who remember him fondly, and young people who learned little about him in school can render their own judgment by watching Reagan on home video.