Hyde Park on Hudson

Director: Roger Michell
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.0

Prosaic portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray, keeping everything that makes Bill Murray Bill Murray tucked neatly inside his cigarette tin) as he hangs around his gorgeous Hyde Park (N.Y.) estate, recruits a new mistress (Laura Linney) and entertains British royalty (King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) as they come to ask him for help with W.W.II. It struggles as both a 'romantic' picture (aside from a quick jerk in his car, Linney and Murray don't have much time - or chemistry - together) and as 'political' one, feebly comparing and contrasting George and Elizabeth's British Approach to Life (being offended over cartoons, not wanting to eat 'peasant food' like a hot dog) with F.D.R.'s American Way (sexual libertinism/"sharing", abundant drinking, open marriages). When a movie's two most memorable moments are a cripple getting sexual treats in a field and a stuttering English king biting into a strangely curved frankfurter there isn't a whole lot to ponder.