Movie critics and audiences do not always see eye to eye – but rarely have they appeared as divided as they are over Reagan, a highly flattering biopic of the Republican president released just months before another deeply polarised US election.
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The film, starring Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan, came out last week and boasts an audience rating of 98 per cent on the Rotten Tomatoes website. But it impressed just 21 per cent of critics.
Professional reviewers mostly trashed the film as a clunky hagiography that omits a controversial leader’s flaws, while thousands of fan responses accused elitist critics of knocking an “uplifting” and “patriotic” film because of their own left-wing politics.
“You add the politics into this one, and all of a sudden it gets extremely skewed,” agreed director Sean McNamara.
