Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello once again, and welcome back. I promised that I would be here today with a movie that definitely lives up to its name. This is one I had been looking forward to a while as it's entirely based on a very important person in our history. I, for one, remember when this person was president, when the elections happened, the whole bit, all the controversy, everything else. And there are some other things that are very strong and current in my memory that I was just kind of curious how this stuff was going to play out with this movie. Now the main character in this movie spent months, maybe even a year or more learning how to be this character. And I want to share a little bit more of that with you as it kind of plays out from there. And so you're probably wondering what movie I'm referring to. Well, I kind of hinted to it a little bit just the fact that I touched on it at the end of yesterday's review of the fact that with me being a constitutional conservative, I really enjoy that I have the opportunity to review conservative based movies from this perspective. Now am I fully aware that I'm going to upset Hollywood with this one? Oh, absolutely. I'm not doing my job unless I'm pissing Hollywood off. I mean, to be honest, I hope you got a good laugh at that as well, because honestly, it's true. It really is true. I don't, I don't care if they get upset with me because I am not writing my reviews and not that I'm even writing them out. It's like I don't even take notes. That's about as far as it gets.
[00:01:49] But I don't review movies for them. I review movies for you. I want to sit here and pretend like I'm talking to my best friend who's sitting here in the room with me and I'm just describing the movie to them or to another person or to just a random person that I run across on the street that asks me, hey, what do you think of this movie? And I can give them an honest opinion of what I thought of the movie. And I sometimes have to separate this out a little bit from my personal opinion versus what I give it on the deputy scale. And this is one of those ones where I kind of have to separate that out a little bit. Now, if you haven't figured out yet, I am talking about the movie Reagan. It is the movie about the life of Ronald Reagan.
[00:02:35] Now this, like I said, this is where I kind of have to separate my personal stuff out a little bit because even though I'm a constitutional conservative.
[00:02:43] I have a few just personal qualms with things that happened during Reagan's presidency and just kind of a few things with that and a few people that were kind of involved with all of that. But I separate that out when I'm watching movies such as this. Now, does that lead me to be maybe a little bit more critical? I don't know. I really don't on that. I try to be neutral on keeping the two opinions on that separate. And I'm going to share with you the two different scores that I would give this one from the movie deputy perspective, and one from, like, based on my own personal perspective of the movie. So, yeah, believe it or not, that really does sometimes result in two different scores. One is kind of what I personally think of it, and one is just more of the whole, just what the movie itself is now in this movie, I was almost worried it was gonna be a documentary of sorts, and Dennis Quaid had spent many, many months, like I said, maybe even a year or more researching this. And the way that this is presented is, like I said, it's not as a documentary, but it jumps back and forth a lot. And it's a little bit confusing because some of the stuff it talks about being present day, and that's a little bit off on the whole thing of present day. So it's just easier to follow the timelines of, like, these ones that actually gives the years. But like I said, it jumps around a bit. So that part's a little bit confusing. But it doesn't take away from the importance of the story. Here we see Ronald Reagan from a young boy, like preteen even, and the life that he lives with his parents, and he's active with his church. And the one thing is, his faith has always been important to him. That was one thing throughout his life, that was one thing that he did not waver on, even in the midst of everything he was going through, was his faith. And his pastor and his mom surprised him with a particular book. Now, this took a little bit of research to find out the book, because I couldn't quite read it on the screen, but I did manage to find the book. So if you are curious about the book, it is in the text section of the podcast. It's also like, I'm going to tell you what it is here. It's that printer of Udell's, a story of the Middle west. It was written by Harold Bell Wright in 1903. Now, you may be wondering why I'm bringing this up. This book was so important to him that he made a very important his decision shortly after reading this book. And I won't give it away because that'd be a spoiler for the movie. And you know me. No spoilers.
[00:05:21] But that one book changed. I think it changed his outlook on life, and it changed how he wanted to approach life. And he went on to go to college, and he went on to become a very famous Hollywood actor. He was a very famous leading man in a lot of pictures. The movie didn't focus a whole lot on that. A gentleman that I spoke with after the movie actually said that that's one thing he would have liked to have seen, focused on maybe a little bit more, was maybe some of the films just so people could find that stuff out without having to go and, like, do really thorough research on it. So, yeah, maybe if they had touched on it a little bit more, really, it only had, like, one of the movie posters in his office that was portrayed on screen of a movie that he'd been in. Other than that, it didn't really touch on a whole lot, but it went into how he dealt with the death of his mother and his first marriage at the birth of his. It didn't, didn't focus on the birth of his children. Just showed just magically. He had a couple kids, which, you know, some years had passed, but didn't really touch on that a whole lot. And then how that kind of fell apart and how he met Nancy and kind of how all that went together. And it even touched on the whole thing that a lot of people bring up. Nancy Reagan or back then, Nancy Davis as being a member of the Communist Party.
[00:06:41] And that is a really important part of this movie. That's actually something that they touch on kind of in this and exactly who Ronald Reagan was to the us government, which a lot of people don't realize. And there was, there's actually a very important piece of this movie that kind of delves a little bit more into that. If you are a fan of Ronald Reagan and you know the history, you probably are already aware of this fact. But if not, then that's going to be an interesting tidbit to pick up while you're watching the movie.
[00:07:14] And so he goes on to live his life and he becomes the governor of California. And don't worry, no spoilers. All this is just basic history. And then he attempts to run for president, which doesn't go quite the way he plans, and then he's determined to do it again. And if you're aware of history at all. In 1980, he wins the presidential election, then again in 1984.
[00:07:36] And I keep saying, and, but it's because of a lot of the choices that he made, kind of a lot of the same reasons people are po, to Trump anymore. He, we see the way Trump is just bold. He's not afraid to be politically correct, incorrect. He's not afraid to just say things like it is. And he's not afraid to just get up and walk out if things are not going the way that you'd think. He's not afraid to just get up and walk out. And this movie is not about Trump, but it's the fact that maybe that inspired Trump by seeing Reagan do so much of this. Back in the day, Reagan was that person that was not afraid to speak his mind. He was that person who was not afraid to stand strong in his convictions.
[00:08:22] He was passionate. I was struggling to find the word, and another young lady came up with that word that was after the movie tonight, and she said she appreciated his passion. And another one that was, that's one thing I talked to people both before and after the movies, and sometimes I will just randomly use little snippets that they give me in my reviews. And so I had a chance to sit down and talk to them.
[00:08:49] Just what the one gal, what the one lady said, and she said, what really got her with this entire movie was his character. He didn't, he never wavered throughout this whole thing, throughout his life, throughout all this whole thing. And his whole big argument of his entire life was to fight communism. He knew what freedom meant, and he knew what it meant to fight for it. And he wasn't afraid to make the hard decisions, even if that was going to mean making a lot of questionable choices along the way. Now, if this continues on through his presidency and past his presidency and all of the interactions that he has with Gorbachev and Thatcher and so many of the other things and how he meets one of his famous speech writers and the life he has with Nancy and just kind of how that plays out. But there's so many parts of this movie that we don't get to see.
[00:09:53] There's so many little stories that we don't get to see. We get to experience through this, the story of a goldfish. Now, that will make a lot more sense if you sit down, watch the movie. But if you do decide to go see this movie, don't just go to see the movie. There are bonuses in the credits. And I know it's a really weird ask, but be sure. To sit all the way through to the end of the credits because there is a bonus after all the credits are done that will take your breath away. It's something that you do not expect. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I will say it will take your breath away.
[00:10:37] There's a line in the movie, at some point you're going to need to pick a side. He picks his side and he makes that decision and he stands firm in that decision.
[00:10:50] And we need more people like that. We need.
[00:10:53] There's so many dangers and everything that come with communism and with socialism and all this other stuff. And we don't understand today, or many people don't understand today, how close we were to the tipping point then and the fact that we're past that tipping point now and we have a few patriots and a few.
[00:11:18] I can't say just a few. I mean, it's a large portion of the country that are fighting to take back our freedom because there are people actually in our country, in the United States of America, are fighting for communism.
[00:11:36] And I'm like, why?
[00:11:41] Our destiny is not our fate. It's our choice. Another line from the movie, and there was something else that kind of touched in this movie, and it's so true for on so many different levels, is that history is never about the when, the where, the why, or the how. Think about that. It's not about the when, the where, the why, or the how.
[00:12:07] Now, you may be thinking, okay, well, what's it up? Well, then what does it come down to? It comes down to the who, who was willing to do the hard stuff. So it's not. It's not about the when, the where, the why the hell. It's the who.
[00:12:22] Now are you going to be the who? Are you going to be the one that's going to have a voice and it's going to speak up for what actually matters, for freedom.
[00:12:32] Guess what? It's not that hard. It really isn't. And I.
[00:12:39] There's a famous quote, and it's not even an original quote of Reagan's, but people remember Reagan, for it is that we are only one generation away from extinction.
[00:12:49] That said that didn't. Freedom is one generation away from extinction. I knew I said that wrong at the moment I said it. I was trying to purely go off memory on that. But think about that. Freedom is one generation away from extinction. We are in a society where so many people want to embrace this whole idea of communism and socialism, thinking that's the way to go.
[00:13:12] It's, it's not, it's, it's really not. And to see Ronald Reagan on the big screen, well, obviously it's Dennis Quaid. But going through all of this and seeing the people that he interacted with and how this all interacted his life.
[00:13:30] So you may be wondering what score I'm, what score I'm at on this. Surprisingly, I'm going to give this movie a guilty rating. Not because there's anything bad in the story, just because it's the level of, just the dialogue. It's, there's no, there's no cursing. It's the level, it's the.
[00:13:51] I'm trying to. The intellectuality of. That's not even a word. It's the, but it's, it's not going to be understood by younger generations unless somebody is there to watch it with them and they explain it. This movie, as much as Dennis Quaid was trying to be Ronald Reagan, he embodies the character completely. He is full on in character. He is acting in a, in a way you don't see Hollywood do anymore. You don't see somebody who's actually acting that character, but as good as he's doing.
[00:14:31] I, for one, never believed it was Ronald Reagan. I want to be sucked into a movie where I feel like I'm actually watching the character come back to life. And he did an amazing job. Don't get me wrong, he did an amazing job as Reagan. But you still know it's Dennis Quaid. It's just, I don't know. It's just not quite, and then there's just some little errors. And then it keeps focusing on, like, these russian people kind of going back and forth and talking about these people that are in Russia or what used to be the Soviet Union, and it kind of goes back to them, and it keeps touching on Reagan through them. And it's a little bit of a disconnect. It is. It's a little bit of a disconnect for the story.
[00:15:14] And so this is where the deputy, my version of the deputy opinion and my opinion are going to differ a little bit because ultimately, I did end up at a 7.5 on the movie deputy scale for this movie just because of the importance of the story that's being told.
[00:15:32] But personally, I'd probably be at about a five.
[00:15:36] I'm judging it based on the same rating scale. I personally would put this around a five. Critically, I'm brown to 7.5. So, I mean, that does give you a little bit of a window there. Is this an important story to see? Absolutely. Are you gonna take something away from this? That's. That completely depends on you. I hope you do. There, there's something important here. My husband has an interest in seeing this, but when I spoke to him after I watched the movie, I was like, let's just wait till it's on Insta video. It's just easier. I think he's going to get more from it if we can, like, pause it and talk about it at home, more so than it just taking place in the theater, where it's just kind of happening, kind of jumping back and forth. Like I said, if you're not really paying attention to all the details, you're probably going to get a little bit lost on that. But the story is, it's definitely an important one to experience.
[00:16:34] So I hope that you do decide to embark on this adventure, whether it be in the theater or at home. I mean, the price of movie tickets is astronomical. So I would completely understand if you wait till you see this at home, but I do hope that you do embark on this, and I do hope that you take something away from this. And of course, always with movie deputy reviews podcast, I'm hoping that you, like, subscribe and share so you always get the latest and greatest content. I will be back the first part of the week. I'm hoping health, I mean, health, providing that. I will be back with, of course, the new Beetlejuice and of course, the classic Beetlejuice for you. I'm excited to see the new one. I have not seen this. I did not get a screener on this one. So I will be seeing this one in the theater like everybody else. And I for one, I'm really looking forward to it. So be sure to come back. And like I said, like and subscribe. So you always get the notifications when these episodes do go live. And of course, I'll be back soon. So I'll talk to you later. Bye.
