Bill Murray is FDR in 'Hyde Park on Hudson' (+trailer)
Bill Murray has long demonstrated that he is capable of being a first-rate actor, so I was not immediately turned off to the idea of his playing wheelchair-bound Franklin Roosevelt in Roger Michell鈥檚 鈥�Hyde Park on Hudson.鈥� He鈥檚 actually rather good in it, especially if you can dispense with all those newsreels of the real FDR you鈥檝e got spinning in your mind.
It鈥檚 a fairly lightweight performance, though, as befitting a fairly lightweight movie. Ostensibly about the dalliance between the president and his sixth cousin Daisy (Laura Linney), it quickly shades into a sort of 鈥淭he King鈥檚 Speech鈥� redo, as King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (the wonderful Olivia Colman) visit FDR in Hyde Park. West鈥檚 鈥淏ertie鈥� isn鈥檛 up to Colin Firth鈥檚, but Michell manages to wring the requisite mixture of pathos and mirth from the confab.
Still, it鈥檚 never altogether clear why this visually blah and dramatically bland movie needed to be made at all (or why it wasn鈥檛 made for television instead). The only answer I can come up with is that Murray wanted to show off with a cigarette-holder. Grade: B- (Rated R for brief sexuality)
