Weekly rewind: January 10
BY MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2013
1/10/13 at 5:41 AM
For expanded review, visit tulsaworld.com/movies.
"Hyde Park on Hudson"
Rating: 
(on a scale of zero to four stars)
"Hyde Park on Hudson" feels something like the anti-"Lincoln," with a film story centered on one of our most idealized presidents - Franklin D. Roosevelt - but told in a tawdry fashion for comedic effect.
The movie's script is both bold - presenting FDR as a womanizer and his wife Eleanor as bisexual, with no hint of fiction - and odd, with its whimsy tailored to Bill Murray's strengths as he portrays our 32nd president.
That style also serves to humanize the man, with Murray portraying him as a droll wit and appearing to greatly enjoy mimicking FDR's look, voice and that teeth-clenching grin he had when biting down on his cigarette holder.
The story introduces us to his cousin, Daisy, who is distant in relations but close in proximity to Hyde Park on Hudson, the upstate New York country home of the president's family that serves as FDR's retreat.
For a man under enormous stress considering the time and the world's state of affairs - 1939, with Germany advancing through Europe - Hyde Park is a positively pastoral place where Daisy serves the president as confidante ("He said I helped him forget the weight of the world") and as the target of his latest personal affections.
As Daisy, Laura Linney never really brings the character into her own, even when she is interacting with Eleanor (Olivia Williams), who knows all of her husband's side women well and abides them because, well, she has her own women friends.
Director Roger Michell more successfully captured the randy comedy he's looking for here in "Venus" with Peter O'Toole in 2006, from the standpoint of pure laughs, poignant moments and comedic moral ambiguities, but "Hyde Park on Hudson" does have its moments.
Now showing
| Movie | Rating (on 4 scale) |
| Argo | |
| The Impossible | |
| Django Unchained | |
| Lincoln | |
| Wreck-it Ralph | |
| Monsters Inc. 3-D | |
| Not Fade Away | |
| Silver Linings Playbook | |
| Flight | |
| Life of Pi | |
| Rise of the Guardians | |
| Hyde Park on Hudson | |
| Les Miserables | |
| Jack Reacher | |
| Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away | |
| Hitchcock | |
| Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 | |
| Skyfall | |
| Promised Land | |
| This is 40 | |
| The Hobbit | |
| The Guilt Trip | |
— MICHAEL SMITH, NOUR HABIB and ROBERT EVATT, World Scene Writers
Associated Images:
Bill Murray stars as Franklin D. Roosevelt in "Hyde Park on Hudson." courtesy
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