The new biopic “Reagan” is doing well at the box office and has achieved an A audience rating from CinemaScore, but most film critics have mocked it as hagiography.
Conservative industry watchers say that’s because critics, who raved about the Barack Obama biopic “Southside with You” in 2016, have a double standard against right-leaning content that audiences love.
And they say the negative reviews scare off liberals who might dislike the film, potentially inflating its audience score.
“This double standard often results in skewed, intellectually disingenuous reviews,” said James Carrick, founder of the film review website Worth It or Woke. “While imperfect, ’Reagan’ delivers exactly what its audience came for, and that’s why it’s connecting with moviegoers, even if critics can’t get past their preconceptions.”
Sasha Stone, a Los Angeles film blogger who covers the Academy Awards, chalked up the disconnect to Hollywood and the critics who crave its approval becoming “another propaganda arm” of the Democratic Party in recent years.
“It isn’t that they thought the Obama movie was good,” Ms. Stone said. “It’s just that they would never viciously attack it in the same way.”
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She noted that Mr. Obama has a deal with Netflix and that Democratic Party icons Jack Smith, James Carville and Hillary Clinton attended the Telluride Film Festival during Labor Day weekend to promote documentaries critical of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“Reagan,” starring Dennis Quaid as the conservative 40th president, opened in third place over the long holiday weekend behind the blockbusters “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Alien: Romulus.” The $25 million independent production surprised forecasters by grossing $10.3 million on 2,750 screens, doubling the $5 million they widely projected it would make.
Showbiz Direct, the film’s startup distributor, announced Monday that “Reagan” took in another $5.2 million during its second weekend. That kept it in third place at the box office and put it on track to make $20 million by the end of this week.
“We believe it’s going to have a long life in theaters as word of mouth continues to spread favorably,” said Kevin Mitchell, founder of Showbiz Direct.
The company noted that “Reagan” ticket sales edged out box office champion “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in 24 locations during its second weekend. That included theaters in New Mexico, Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Arizona, Vermont, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
The sprawling movie offers a sympathetic portrayal of Ronald Reagan’s childhood in small-town Illinois, years as a Hollywood actor; courtship of his second wife, Nancy; Christian faith; and struggle against communism as a two-term Republican president in the 1980s.
On Monday afternoon, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes showed that 98% of filmgoers and just 20% of critics gave “Reagan” a positive review.
That 78-percentage-point difference makes “Reagan” the theatrical film with the widest gap between critics and fans on the website. It surpasses the earlier record of 65% held by “The Boondock Saints,” an R-rated action-comedy from 1999 that 91% of fans and only 26% of critics favored.
“While ‘Reagan’ the movie undoubtedly admires Reagan the man, its cloying and glossy rendering of history flattens the 40th U.S. President into caricature,” states the Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus.
By comparison, 71% of moviegoers and 91% of film critics enjoyed “Southside with You,” a romanticized telling of Mr. Obama’s first date with his future wife Michelle in 1989 Chicago.
“Southside With You” looks back on a fateful real-life date with strong performances and engaging dialogue, adding up to a romance that makes for a pretty good date movie in its own right,” the Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus states.
Christian Toto, the editor of HollywoodInToto.com, said such numbers confirm that his fellow critics “overwhelmingly lean to the left” and that moviegoers who “loathed his presidency” have avoided seeing “Reagan.”
“The film’s narrative sweep, and the recreation of key moments from his presidency, deserve credit no matter how you look at the political landscape,” said Mr. Toto, a former Washington Times reporter who gave the movie a positive review.
“Reagan” is the latest in a succession of faith-based and conservative independent films that have scored big at the box office without impressing critics over the past decade.
The films range from the “God’s Not Dead” series that started in 2014 to last summer’s human trafficking drama “Sound of Freedom” from Angel Studios.
The latter landed higher on the box office chart than the franchise sequels “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — Part 1” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” despite getting mixed reviews from critics.
“Reagan” seems unlikely to match the success of “Sound of Freedom,” a sleeper hit that grossed more than $250 million against a $14.5 million budget to become one of the most successful independent releases in history.
But Paul Asay, an entertainment critic at the Christian review website Plugged In, said it could still remind Hollywood studios that they have neglected a significant audience.
“Conservatives go to the movies, too,” Mr. Asay said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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