LBJ (2017)

Directed by Rob Reiner. Starring Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stahl-David, Jeffrey Donovan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Pullman, Brent Bailey, John Ellison Conlee, John Burke. [R]

Superficial, exceedingly ordinary biopic of Lyndon B. Johnson isn’t quite hagiographic, but does skim past the complicated truth to make its subject flawed but supremely decent, and unfairly maligned by others in his quest to compromise in his role as vice president. The lion’s share of the narrative showing Johnson navigating contentious political battles between the party’s Northern progressives and the Southern conservatives is pointlessly intercut with brief scenes of Johnson’s arrival in Dallas on the fateful November day; in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, the final act then shows him continuing the ex-president’s efforts to pass the Civil Rights bill…yet Joey Hartstone’s screenplay never explains what caused him to dedicate himself to the cause so fully (save for one of those well-meaning anecdotes about the plight of his black maid while said maid is nowhere to be seen). Harrelson’s portrayal is anything but convincing mimicry (the bad makeup job doesn’t help), but he wins out simply by employing his idiosyncratic magnetism. It’s a sad state of affairs that this mediocre drama is probably the best thing that the once-“sure thing” director Reiner has helmed in over twenty years. First saw the light of day at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016, not long after the superior LBJ biography, All the Way, premiered on HBO.

54/100