REVIEW: FDR Gets A Handy In Dismal ?Hyde Park on Hudson? ? And Moviegoers Get Hosed

A dismal misfire, Hyde Park on Hudson could have been a spoof of a period prestige film, had it a little more energy and humor.

Consider this scene: Daisy (Laura Linney), a poor distant relative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), has begun getting summoned to the house the President shares with his mother (Elizabeth Wilson) to provide him with company and distraction from his work. The two go for drives in the countryside, while Daisy intones in a plummy voiceover about the Depression, her lonely life taking care of her aunt and  her growing closeness with FDR: "I helped him forget the weight of the world," she says around the time that the president shoos his security away, pulls over in a picturesque field and pulls her hand toward him. The camera retreats to a decorous distance, the breeze blows over the wildflowers, FDR's custom-built convertible begins a-rocking, and it takes a second to realize...why yes, FDR just got his spinster cousin to give him a handy.

Directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Morning Glory) and based on a radio play by Richard Nelson, Hyde Park on Hudson is an arthritically stilted production that looks even more rickety when measured against the ranks of the awards contenders to which it aspires. It's half an unconventional and underdeveloped romance and half a recounting of the 1939 visit King George VI (Samuel West), aka Bertie, and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) paid to FDR at his Dutchess County estate to firm up the relationship between the UK and the US in the lead-up to World War II, the first time a reigning British monarch did such a thing.

With the exception of FDR's rural interlude, neither of these two tales unfolds with any momentum or satisfaction. (The latter story…

Source: http://www.celebrities.com/celebrities-gossip/review-fdr-gets-a-handy-in-dismal-hyde-park-on-hudson-%e2%88%92-and-moviegoers-get-hosed/

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