New ‘Reagan’ biopic is not a great communicator

If you were a recent arrival from Alpha Centauri and approached the new biopic “Reagan” with no knowledge of America’s 40th president, here’s what you might learn:

He was an actor who made one notable movie and a lot of TV commercials. He hated communism and Soviet Russia, and the Germans tore down the Berlin Wall because he told them to. He had no domestic policies except trickle-down economics, which worked. He didn’t actively parent any children (though he did grieve a daughter who died at birth). His first wife was a drunk. AIDS was just a word on a quilt. Some angry weirdo shot him, but we don’t know who he was or why he did it.

For a movie about the Great Communicator, “Reagan” communicates surprisingly little.

Dennis Quaid is an acceptable simulacrum in the title role, apple-cheeked and husky-voiced, but Ronald “Dutch” Reagan had a folksy surface charisma that was a huge part of his appeal, and that proves impossible to replicate. Quaid offers a congenial impersonation with little depth, in part because depth is not what we wanted (or got) from Reagan. The performance is a fitting centerpiece in a movie that plays like an overlong Classics Illustrated version of a biography, or something of which Jack Warner, Reagan’s old boss in Hollywood, would approve.

Based on Paul Kengor’s 2007 book “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” “Reagan” organizes its narrative around its subject’s lifelong fight against the Red Menace, which it assumes we know is bad without being told why. Godlessness, mostly: The script by Howard Klausner (“Space Cowboys”) takes Reagan’s spiritual beliefs on faith and brings in Kevin Sorbo as an influential pastor to tell young Dutch (David Henrie) “Anybody can be God’s people, so long as they choose Him.” (The film’s producer, Mark Joseph, has made a career of faith-based projects.)

In the movie’s most absurd stretch, a framing narrative casts Jon Voight as a retired Russian KGB spy explaining to a younger colleague in the present day why he admires Reagan and why he understood the U.S.S.R. was doomed. “I knew he was the one who would bring us down, not with missiles or guns or even politics, but with something much greater … people give their lives for one another, for the freedom to live their lives as they choose and for God. We took that away. The Crusader gave it back to them.”

The first half of “Reagan” follows the young actor and head of the Screen Actors Guild as he fights against Communist infiltration of the Hollywood unions in the persons of labor leader Herb Sorrell (a thuggish Mark Kubr) and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (an effete Sean Hankinson). First wife Jane Wyman (Mena Suvari) scoffs, “Is there anything worse than an actor with a cause?” between swigs of her cocktail; thank goodness Nancy Davis (Penelope Ann Miller) shows up a few scenes later to reluctantly go on a riding date with the now-divorced Reagan. (“There’s nothing like a relationship with a horse,” he says.)

Journeyman director Sean McNamara (“Soul Surfer”) moves us through Reagan’s political life at a dogtrot, emphasizing the Cold War rhetoric and downplaying any mention of Big Government or bureaucratic waste, which the candidate rode to election as governor of California and ultimately two terms in the White House. We hear Reagan briefly disparage tax increases but nothing pro or con about his administration’s dismantling of the social safety net. Blink and you’ll miss the 1981 air traffic controllers strike (“A contract is a contract”) and the Iran-contra scandal. To its credit, the film shows Reagan admitting he misspoke when he said the U.S. didn’t trade arms for hostages; he also says the Contras “remind me of Washington and the Continental Army.”

“Reagan” gives us the public moments (“There you go again” in the 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter; “I will not exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience” four years later against Walter Mondale) but little of actual substance. The film reduces anyone who opposed Reagan’s policies to screaming hippie protesters holding signs that read “God Does Not Exist.” At one point, Voight’s elderly spy says of the U.S. president, “It became my obsession to understand what was beneath the facade.” “Reagan” says that what was beneath the facade was … more facade.

The faithful for whom “Reagan” was made aren’t likely to see that it’s a hagiography as rosy and shallow as anything in a Kremlin May Day parade. As pop-culture propaganda – popaganda, if you will – the movie’s strictly for true believers. As history, it’s worthless.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.