The American President

After touring the White House last Saturday I just had to watch this movie. I also hadn't seen this one in years but not because of a broken VCR (as I had this film on VHS) but due to the real life consequences of September 11th. Before then I liked to pop this movie in every chance I got, a distinction only held by my Star Trek movies.

Anyway I popped this movie in as soon as I returned from Washington, DC. This was a good movie. It was written by West Wing creator and scribe Aaron Sorkin. It was basically a political movie with a romantic comedy plot.

Now consider this. The year was 1995 and I can't say that the President we had at that time exactly made me proud, but Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) was a President I can look up to. Yeah he was a Democrat but he wasn't a bad leader (and that's only because he was written that way). All the same I loved the discussion of policy in this film.

Then he meets Sidney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning) who visits the White House as part of her job. Then she catches the eye of the leader of the free world and the most of the film has him juggling his duties as President as well as maintaining a romantic relationship with a woman whose job it was to get tough with him in the first place.

In the course of this movie the President is pounded by a Republican Senator (Richard Dreyfuss) who wants to take his job. By the end of this movie the President rips the Senator a new one and just as he starts to lose momentum, he regains it by the time the movie ends at the state of the union.

This is a great movie and it without a doubt gives you that great patriotic feeling. Even if you may not like the fact that the President has a girlfriend or that she might spend a night at the White House.