The film seems incapable of imagining what its protagonist was like in private moments or ascribing any interior complexity to him.

| Nov 19, 2024

Reagan can’t even trace the broad outlines of your stock biopic, because it refuses to allow in its protagonist any kind of complicating flaw, and the geopolitical stalemate that acts as the primary conflict is too big and abstract for the frame.

| Sep 9, 2024

Like Reagan the actor and Reagan the president, Reagan the new movie has a strained relationship with reality.

| Sep 6, 2024

Without any lifelike characters, it’s hard to find oneself caring, and thus, Reagan’s dedication to such narrow themes proves limiting.

| Sep 3, 2024

It comes so close to parody that it brings to mind the “Saturday Night Live” “Mastermind” skit.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 2, 2024

It’s a thin line between satire and self-parody, and more sophisticated directors than McNamara have tripped all over it. Reagan looks a bit like a berserk Saturday Night Live sketch, or maybe a biopic parody à la Walk Hard...

| Aug 31, 2024

A fawning biopic light on subtlety.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 30, 2024

The greatest sin of Reagan, though, is not its warped worldview, which is to be expected, but that for a movie about a man who puts himself at the center of a world apparently on the brink of annihilation, Reagan lacks any drama at all.

| Original Score: F | Aug 30, 2024

A hollow portrait...

| Aug 30, 2024

Made up to look like Reagan, Quaid instead resembles one of those puppets from Genesis’s “Land of Confusion” video; the movie does him no favors by showing footage of that video at one point.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Aug 30, 2024

Regardless of how you feel about Ronald Reagan the president, most will be united in finding this biopic a preachy, plodding, graceless groaner.

| Aug 30, 2024

There probably hasn’t been a presidential biopic this tedious in 80 years, not since Henry King’s Wilson back in 1944.

| Aug 29, 2024

There is a great deal more hagiography than history in “Reagan,” a worshipful biopic of the 40th U.S. President that often plays like the cinematic equivalent of CliffsNotes.

| Aug 29, 2024

This is a 135-minute film that demands a lot more depth. And, so, to co-opt a political phrase from Bill Clinton, whom Quaid also has played: It’s the script, stupid.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 29, 2024

Mannered acting, dismal cinematography, clunky attempts to enhance excitement via gimmicks such as slow motion, and a musical score like a fountain of goo all serve as flashbacks to Reagan-era network schlock.

| Aug 29, 2024

No life, certainly not one so monumental and complicated as Reagan’s, can be satisfyingly condensed into a single feature film, of course. But this is a Coles Notes level of biography that is convinced it’s The Greatest Story Ever Told.

| Aug 29, 2024

Most of the major events in Reagan's life are covered, but few of them are recounted in an incisive fashion.

| Aug 29, 2024

It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.

| Aug 29, 2024

As history, it’s worthless.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 28, 2024

The film’s treatment of its subject is belligerently hamfisted, disingenuous, and incurious.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Aug 28, 2024