Review: Hyde Park on Hudson

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Bill Murray, Olivia Colman & Samuel West in Hyde Park on Hudson

It's that time of year when studios put highbrow films in theaters in hopes that these prestige movies will be celebrated and appreciated. I'm sure many expect Bill Murray to be nominated for some award for his role of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson. Certainly this is very likely, but I don't think it would be right or deserved; he's done far better work in previous outings. While Murray attempts to pull off FDR's speech pattern in one scene, I found myself thinking, "It's about time to watch Scrooged!" In other words, this movie is a big disappointment.

I hadn't previously seen Laura Linney in anything in which she wasn't wonderful, but there's a first time for everything, I guess. She awkwardly plays FDR's single cousin five or six times removed, Daisy, who becomes one of his lovers. FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson is a player, see? His wife Eleanor, played unconvincingly by Olivia Williams (tiny Rushmore reunion!), rarely visits the estate, and he's got some other ladies on the side. 

The film spans a period of years, but the main focus is on a 1939 weekend that the king and queen of England spend at FDR's family home in upstate New York. Bertie (played by Samuel West, who I remember best from the late '80s TV-movie Prince Caspian, but who has been in many many things since) and Elizabeth (Olivia Colman, who recently played Thatcher's daughter in The Iron Lady) are the cosmopolitan British royals who hope to convince FDR -- and thus America -- to join their fight against the Nazis. 

Frankly, West and Colman are the best thing about Hyde Park on Hudson. West's stutter is more I, Claudius than The King's Speech, but he and Colman share some nice chemistry and rapport in their scenes. Their time onscreen was about the only time I wasn't wishing I was elsewhere.

Linney's Grey's Anatomy-like narration certainly doesn't help things. In Hyde Park on Hudson, her Daisy is a dowdy, naive spinster "rescued" from her solitude through her relationship with FDR --  a dowdy spinster who performs a sex act with this former president in his car in a flowered field, no less.  Oh yeah, this movie goes there.

It's a shame that Hyde Park on Hudson limits such talent as Eleanor Bron (from one of my favorite movies, A Little Princess) to a few lines. Bron plays the elderly aunt that Daisy cares for and lives with. God forbid the scope of Daisy's life be limited to that of a spinster caretaker! FDR, take her away from this dull, incomplete life with your stamp-collecting flirtations.

On paper, Hyde Park on Hudson seems bursting with promise, but the lazy screenplay (drinking game: how many time are hot dogs mentioned?), uncomfortable acting, and other factors ruin it. I was dismayed at the time, but now I can't regret missing the cut for this screening during Austin Film Festival. My time was much better spent eating lunch in Royal Blue Grocery, reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers on my Kindle and spotting the guy from Happy Endings at the next table.