Boomer and Gen Z React to Dennis Quaid's 'Reagan'

Obviously, you watched Reagan on TV. You were alive when he was president. You were an adult when he was president. What did you think of Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan? You know what? At the start of the movie, I was like, you got to be kidding. No way. But after a while, he started to look like Reagan to me, and I started to buy it. Now, his speech pattern and his mannerisms were good. Quaid did a good job on that. You can't change how you look that much. Yeah. But he did look like him pretty much, you know, and he looked like him more and more as the movie went on. And the one that actually saw Reagan was like, oh, yeah, I forgot what he looked like. Hi, welcome to The Real Generation Gap. I'm BJ Kang. I'm Fred Soteli. And the movie we're reviewing today is the 2024 film Reagan. From actor to 40th president of the United States, this biopic covers Ronald Reagan going from small town boy all the way to the leader of the free world. Right. The last great American president, Ronald Reagan. I tell you, I truly believe that the reason he was the last great president was because of his faith. He was a faith based. He lived a faith based life and he never turned his back on that. And he used that faith to fortify his position on everything. And I really believe that we won't have good unity in this country till we have unity of faith. I think when everybody pretty much agrees on a morality, that many, many of these problems will disappear. One of the reasons I really love this movie, and not only did I love this movie, but I went to a theater that was very, very heavily attended and people cheered during this movie. And at the end, there was a standing ovation. So I was pretty proud of those people. And, you know, there was nobody wearing a red hat or anything, but these were mostly people from that era. I saw the movie very near the Reagan library. And there was a lot of love for that man. That's for sure. And you see it because in every campaign since him, every candidate has mentioned them, whether disparagingly or in an exultant way. So he's a real landmark in our history. And I'm very proud that the American people voted him into office. And his second election, he got 49 of 50 states losing only Minnesota, which was Malter Mondale's home state. So, you know, they had the little, you know, election and when there was an election fraud, but it was election bias. Yeah, you know, and you can understand that even though it's stupid. So anyway, go ahead and give me some of your impressions. Yeah, okay. So I'm, so as you know, I'm pretty, I like to be very strict when it comes to or very scrutinized when it comes to movies that depict any sort of like historical event or person, you know, and there's a lot of like, you can already see what a good presidential movie has looked like before. Like if you've seen Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis, or one of my personal favorites, which not a president, but a vice president was Vice by, I believe, Adam McKay, which covered Dick Cheney as vice president. I like that one. Who's currently having a resurgence, right? Now, now all of a sudden we have somebody with an I like Dick button. So I was, so I was pretty excited to see this movie because, you know, I like movies about history and I'm always very curious to see how well it does. And in my opinion, this one came off a little cheesy. That is true. Yeah. Like, like it or not. I don't want to admit that, but I was hoping you wouldn't say it, but you did anyway. But yeah, it was, it was a puff piece. It was, you know, this is our hero, you know, but, but he deserves adulation. But anyway, let me, let me let you elaborate on some of that. Yeah. So they honestly, they did a good job, I think, covering like basically his, they did a good job covering the historical facts, which was basically from him being the president of the Screen Actors Guild. I believe he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild all the way to, you know, his governorship in California to, you know, you know, winning a second term all the way even to his dementia that he unfortunately developed later. I'm sorry, Alzheimer's that he unfortunately developed later in his life. So I think they did a good job covering, you know, what happened during his presidency. I was not a fan of how they depicted him throughout it. The great thing was he didn't have the Alzheimer's while he was the president. Well, there is a little, there has been a little bit of debate about that. Yeah. I appreciate that, but it wasn't, it wasn't demonstrated in his, in real life. I was, I lived during that time and yeah, he, he began to decline at the end. Yeah. He did begin to, but everything was pretty well figured out and the country was running really well. We had a terrific economy, different, terrific position in the world diplomatically and all that. We're very strong America. Well, that was one of the, one of the problems I did have, which was the film lacked depth because it was afraid to touch certain topics or to just sort of like flesh out. Cause you know, there's no perfect president. There's always going to be something they overlook or don't do well. Yeah. It would be impossible. Yeah. You know, it's impossible. Uh, and because of that, the film lag, I mean, yes, it did cover the Iran Contra, you know, conspiracy or yeah. Yeah. But there is, there's a couple of other things that I wish they had touched on to add more depth because it kind of went past that whole thing kind of fast. The whole Iran Contra, it's more of like a footnote. Well, you know what? Everything, everything in the whole movie was that way. Like the Star Wars thing, that was big. It was, they like, you know, six or seven sentences. Right. SDI. Right. Good job. They, they, they, they, you know, had like six sentences about that. Then they had the six sentences about the Contras and the Sandinistas. Then they had six sentences, you know, that they covered a lot of ground because let's face it, this guy's life. It's a lot of ground to cover with two terms. Yeah. You know, I didn't realize it until I started talking with you, but they did focus on his young life a lot. It did, you know, they were trying to, it was a different momentum, wasn't it? Part of me was a little uncomfortable with that. It was like, they were trying to build this character about Ronald Reagan. Don't get me wrong. Ronald Reagan was a great communicator and he was a very efficient leader, but it's kind of like, they were trying to make it seem as if he was this way, like his whole life. Like he didn't like pick up things along the way. I mean, there are a couple of scenes like that, but it's kind almost like they're making a cartoon character out of Ronald Reagan, I would say, you know, he has little motifs and gimmicks and stuff like that. Like as if his whole life, he was always the crusader and stuff like that. He was. And he did tell the jokes all through his life. He was very charismatic that way. You know, he didn't take himself so seriously. He was, you know, he served the Lord and he was well aware that he did that. It wasn't me. It was kind of like, we, you know, he had a very thing now that they focused a lot on the screen actor guild part. And that was a large part of his life. And he did not expect to be the president. He was fairly advanced once he started running. Yeah. Now one of the things that they didn't say that you may or may not know is he had a tremendous learning disability until somewhere until he was seven or eight years old. He needed glasses and no one knew. So they were like, well, why is he spastic? He can't play sports. Why can't he read? Why can't he do that? The poor kid couldn't see. He went on vacations with his family that they actually took him on the same vacation once they got him glasses. And he was like, wow, I didn't realize this lake was like this. He'd take him to the lake or something. It was, he really didn't see it. So they didn't really tell that. They just got right to the port, like where he was the lifeguard. Yeah. But by that time, and they showed him as a little kid, all of a sudden he had glasses. Yeah. Right. And that's what made all the difference. They thought he was like mentally retarded at first, but it was just because he didn't see well. Okay. And it took them, everybody, people weren't that sharp then to figure out if you had dyslexia or something, they would never know. All right. I had an uncle with that. We just thought he was an idiot. I kind of wish that we saw that in the movie instead of Ronald Reagan, very commonly in the movie, always going. It was not a fan of the writing. A lot of the dialogue was very much like Ronald Reagan going like, this is wrong. We shouldn't do this. And it was like, every scene with Ronald Reagan was very much like, this is wrong. And I'm doing my best to just do what's right for the country, even though it's like- But he was like that even on TV. Yeah, on TV. But let's see more about what he was like, even behind the scenes and stuff like that. A lot of it was really just an embellishment of what he's commonly perceived as. Right. Yeah. It was Our Dear Leader. It was an Our Dear Leader movie. You can make a movie where you praise someone or even you portray them in a good light, but you have to be willing to give depth to your writing and your portrayal and the character. You can't just show them only the good side. And going back to what I said about there were certain things I wish they touched on. They did show that he had some controversies during his term as governor. But one thing I would have liked to have seen touched on was the Black Panther protests, I believe, at City Hall, which led to the assault rifles ban in California. Or the number one thing they 100% missed over was the AIDS crisis in America during his presidency. Well, that's because they didn't want to indict Tony Fauci, who was guilty of the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. Anyway, well, I don't know. Because that was a big controversy about his presidency and his legacy. There wasn't a whole lot of attention given to the AIDS crisis that was developing in America. There were bigger issues. At that time, the perspective on it was not like the retro perspective that we have now. Now we look back on it and it's like, well, that was a big issue. But there are so many things like that in life. You have to prioritize what you're going to focus on. What are we going to do? If you have a tragic economy, you have to fix that. If you have a tragic medical thing, you have to fix that. But the AIDS crisis was not a tragic medical thing. It was very compartmentalized. If you had a monogamous marriage and that kind of thing, you were not going to have that problem. So it was considered, once again, a breach of morality. If you had that, you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing. Most of America felt that way at the time. The vast population of America didn't care about that because they were never going to have that problem because they were in monogamous relationships where everybody was clean. It was only in a subculture of deviant behavior, at least at the time, it was extremely deviant behavior. That's why it wasn't like everybody was aware of it and he denied it. It just wasn't a priority. It was largely not even from in America. It was something that was imported here. There was a couple other medical things during that time, like Ebola viruses and things like that, that also happened, but they were put down or they ran out of steam or whatever might have happened. These epidemics and stuff, they're kind of constant. Some of them are more publicized than others. Some are more politicized than others, depending on who it happens to and why and how and everything that goes with it and how responsible America is for it and that kind of good stuff like the current one. There were so many aspects to his life. I don't remember in my own experience with this, I don't remember anybody caring that he was divorced. Now, there probably were people who did. Was he the first divorce president? I don't remember if he was the first. I don't know offhand either, but sometimes it's a big issue. Yeah, it is. I remember our own dementia patient going, he's got the morals of an alley cat or something. It's like, well, so does your son. At the time, it was just Ron and Nancy. Jane Wyman, she was a reality. She had had a career and they had once been, but I think that their separation might have been pretty amicable. Another thing was that I'm sure there was probably a lot more to their divorce instead of her just going, I want to focus on my career and Ronald Reagan just going, we should focus on doing something with our influence. A divorce, there's a lot more aspects to that than just like. I'm not so sure. You could be 100% right, but I'm not so sure. Two mature adults could say, look, we're just going in different directions. Let's hang it up. It doesn't have to be this soul crushing thing, although they showed where he had some sadness and everything. He wasn't happy to be doing this, but it wasn't a big factor either in the story and the movie. I don't believe it was a real big factor in real life, in my memory, because I'm going through what I can remember about this. This is about him. I remember a country that was really in favor of him. He had no opponents. Mondale was like, well, you've got to be kidding. It's like when we put McCain up against Obama, it was like, what are you kidding? I can't believe they made the election as close as it was because McCain threw the election and then Romney threw the election. These are guys who didn't fight. They campaigned a little, but they didn't really put any pressure on him. Reagan had more pressure from his own party than from without the party. That's an aspect I want to draw on from you, which is you obviously lived during that time. As an adult. Yeah, the oldest president. The oldest I ever was to really even comprehend the president was Obama. Obviously, you watched Reagan on TV. You were alive when he was president. You were an adult when he was president. What did you think of Dennis Clayton as Ronald Reagan? You know what? At the start of the movie, I was like, you've got to be kidding. No way. After a while, he started to look like Reagan to me. I started to buy it. His speech pattern and his mannerisms were good. Clayton did a good job on that. You can't change how you look that much. He did look like him pretty much. He looked like him more and more as the movie went on. When I actually saw Reagan, it was like, oh yeah, I forgot what he looked like. I had bought it so much. One of my favorite jokes back then was, I could be wrong about this, but I think Cheech Marin was the one who said, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was him. He said, oh, the Hispanic community, we like Reagan. We don't know anything about his policies. We just like his haircut. That's a guy you can be proud to go low-riding with because Reagan dyed his hair black and it looked ridiculous. But there were people who liked that. That was a good joke for whoever told it. I'm giving it to Cheech Marin. I could be wrong, but that was a clever thing that he had this Hollywood look. Like Reagan, he was a more made up. Nixon didn't try to be good looking. It was funny because just before the election, I went in my friend's house and his father was an executive at Midlantic Corporation. As I walked through the house, his father said, hey, are you going for the peanut head or the prune face? I said, the prune face. He goes, oh, you're a good boy, Fred. That's the way he characterized him. He was, at the time, really old for a president. He was the oldest president to have taken office at the time. I do remember when he said about Mondale, when he said during the debate, he said, I won't let age be an issue. I won't exploit the fact of Walter Mondale's youth and inexperience compared to mine. At one point, I believe he was running against one of the Kennedys for something. They asked him some question and he said, well, at least I didn't have to ask my mother if I could run. He had a lot of good shots in on people. He was a good stand-up comedian and he did those Russian jokes. Yeah, the film did do a good job. I did think it was a little interesting. I thought it was cool. I'll say that. I thought it was cool how they inserted Dennis Quaid, Ronald Reagan into the actual footage of those speeches and stuff because you would see the real Walter Mondale next to Dennis Quaid Reagan. Yeah. I thought that was a cool effect. It was like magic. It was kind of like magic. I did have an issue with some of the special effects kind of didn't look great. It was at those moments where you kind of tell they didn't have an amazing budget for CGI or just like the best green screen in certain scenes. Also, there were some questionable sort of effects or just sort of like kind of like the slow motion. For example, when the assassination attempts happens, there's a lot of sort of like weird flashing and slow motion effects that were meant to just sort of drive an artificial sense of excitement around that, I think. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I wasn't tuned into that. Sometimes I get sucked in and the magic of what they're doing completely works on me. I can't help being biased myself. I really liked the guy. I thought he did a great job. Just like Donald Trump, he was tortured by society. They did all kind of mean tricks to him. There was all kind of like dirty, underhanded publicity of stuff. They made up things that didn't happen. They really beat him up. His own party did. He surmounted all that. Then it was interesting to me because I said to somebody in the theater, well, this movie couldn't come at a better time. They said, well, why do you say that? I said, well, we have the same kind of person now just before the election. It's the same dynamic with the Russian. At that time, it was Russia, Russia, Russia. Yeah, the USSR. The person said, I didn't see any connection or something. I was like, you didn't see any connection? This was such a pro-MAGA style thing. The message was America first. He said, we win, you lose. That's the policy. Then we have a guy now running who's like, yeah, we'll put tariffs on. We'll make you pay for this. We'll make you pay for what you're doing. We'll make you pay. We have a Democrat party that scream and pay your fair share all the time. Then they deride the guy that wants the world to pay their fair share for all that we do. People don't realize America, if our Navy didn't protect the shipping lines of the world, we could not have the international commerce that we do have. Just look at Japan as the perfect example. We protect their commerce with our Navy. If that breaks down, we're going to have full-scale piracy and world trade will be nothing like it was for the past 50, 60 years. That is a fun fact. Just a little fun fact, the United States Navy was created to combat pirates. Right. Along with the Marine Corps. I enjoyed watching the movie. It was very uplifting. I said to one person, I was leaving the theater and I said, hey, best movies in this top gun, right? The guy went like, yeah, that's right. Well, I found one of those guys. It was super rah-rah America. I think we need that. I think that alone is a unifying thing. Now, there are plenty of people that are going to just see this movie and just because of their own agenda, they're just going to hate everything. The movie did have an uplifting message, which was American unity and people should feel like they should be able to unify behind their president. I think that's a good message. I was not a fan of a lot of the cheesiness that came with a lot of- There truly was. Yes. There truly was. It was distracting even. A little bit. Ronald Reagan, great president, funny, handsome and stuff like that. I was hoping, you always say that I always want to see more of the people out of these movies. It's like, there's no way Ronald Reagan was that funny. I mean, he was funny, don't get me wrong. He really was. He was funny and charming. Do you go on YouTube and watch him just tell jokes for like an hour? I've seen them. I've seen those speeches. But he's not- Not the speeches, just the jokes. He's not like that all the time. He's not the crusader. No, the other rest of the time, he was very tough. Yeah. He felt like he had the backing of the creator and he felt like everything he was doing was morally correct. To have that kind of confidence is a real big deal. He wasn't looking at polls, what do the woke say or whatever. He didn't pander to groups at any time. He didn't try to draw in ethnic groups or put on a fake voice or something like you hear people do now. He kept it really real the whole time. And like him or hate him, you know what to get, you know what you're getting. And they sure did know when they had those hostages in Iran, they knew what they were getting. Because when he became the president, they released those 51 people immediately because they knew he was going to nuke them. He was going to send in heavy, I mean, they were going to have to pay for those hostages and they knew it. And it's important for the leader of your country, when you have that strength, you don't want to use it to potential, right? And he was the big guy in the room. And when he said nyet to the Russian, Gorbachev, yes, right. And yeah, and Gorby was trying to be the peacemaker, but Reagan, he didn't allow that weakness to make him weak. Speaking of the Russians, what did you think of that whole aspect of the film, of like the entire story of Reagan is told from an ex-KGB spy? Like, what did you think of that aspect? I can't believe I didn't bring that up because it was played by John Boyd. Yeah, yeah. My primary. Yeah. And what a job he did. Right. I thought he was believable, but he was the you know. Yeah. Yeah. For those for those of you who haven't seen the movie, you're seeing this review or something. The whole story of Reagan's career was told by a Soviet spy who was assigned to spy on him, even like not from youth. But as soon as he became on the scene as a leader, Russia wanted to keep tabs on him and everything. And this is the guy who did. He was ex-KGB. He was retired now. And a current KGB guy came in and said, hey, what can you tell me about, you know, Ronald Reagan and his career? And so John Boyd, the KGB guy starts to tell him everything he knows. And the the current younger agent finds it all hard to believe. Well, who would believe that there could be such a Superman, you know? And he and John Boyd, obviously, at that point in his life, he because he was so intimately connected with the life of Ronald Reagan, he had nothing but respect and admiration for him. I think that was like to me, that was part of the cheesiness a little bit. It's like because it's like it's one thing to have your supporters expected respect and admire you. But to have a Russian KGB agent talk about you even in the same way is a little cheesy in and of itself. It kind of I'll tell you what happens when you get old. OK, when you get old, you look back on things and you realize who did what. Right. I had a stepfather. What was he like? How did I react to him? At the time, I reacted one way. Now, in retrospect, I see him very differently. Teachers that I had in school who I completely disregarded, who I yeah, whatever the teacher there, you know, they're useless. Right now, I look back and I think, wow, what a great man this was. You know, Dr. Krantz, Dr. Workinger, these guys, they they really were Alpha M Garth. They really were trying to make a difference. And these kids, they were trying to educate them and move them along and broaden their mind and their analytic thinking ability and all that good stuff. There were some real heroes that I took for granted. Yeah. And I think that it's very possible that a very old man like that, he I I think you would almost have a like a love affair with somebody that you studied. Right. You study somebody your whole life. Yeah. And after a while, either you disregard them, there's a big waste of time. Yeah. Or you appreciate their virtues and you appreciate their frailties. But either way, you appreciate. Yeah. So well, he went through this hard patch, but he got through it. Well, he was a little bit of a tyrant and we handled it. Well, he was a little bit of a you know, he had a weak moment or he was inappropriately, you know, tyrannical. Yeah. You know, that's what you can be. Right. And and I think when when you're intimate with somebody like that, after a while, you kind of you kind of fall in love with him. You know, I mean, you fall in love with your perception of him. It's because it's a big part of your life. That wasn't asked. So another thing about this movie is that this movie is based off of the book that was written. It's called The Crusader. I believe I forgot who the book author was. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. And so that aspect is also from the book, which is essentially it was a bunch of KGB based off of real documents and reports from a bunch of KGB agents that were supposed to keep track on Ronald Reagan. So that was an aspect they incorporated from the book into the movie. Right. According to the book, according to the movie, that's how he was characterized. Yeah, that's how the KGB guy said. He goes, this guy, this guy's not a two bit politician that can be bought. He's not shallow. He's a he's a crusader. Yeah. And those people are few and far between. I know one in my life, I can tell you that. Did the movie ever say who the younger like sort of KGB guy was? No, he was just a guy who imposed himself. He knocked on the door and I kind of comrade I had. And he goes, Comrade, I kind of had it. I kind of had a hunch that it was like Putin or something like a young Putin because he was a KGB. You want to read that in? That was my little like fan theory right there. I was like, that's that's young Putin right there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's starting off. But no. Yeah. But I don't think so. But but that what that was a kind of clever idea. I didn't have that idea, but that was, you know, somebody in his administration anyway, because Putin's had an administration for quite a few years now. Chip, I am about to start the biggest war of this century, and I'm not going to fire a single shot. You're going to blow up eight years of diplomacy. Well, if you think that got there on these that I want, you just wait. What did the president know? And when did he know it? What would you have me do? I want you to fight. Gorbachev tear down this wall. The thing we didn't mention was the Gorbachev tear down that wall moment. Yeah. And that was that was something that I had completely forgotten about, that he had that speechwriter who was kind of the outsider. Yeah. The hippie guy. Right. And who came along and and Reagan sort of adopted him like, you have talent. Yeah. You know, what do you think? Let's hear what you think. It's always interesting to hear like the other, like a different voice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, let's get this guy's take on it. You know, I often think if I ever somehow through some bizarre twist of fate was put in a like a leadership role like that, I have a couple of friends that I would call like quietly, privately and say, like, listen, Russ, this is what I'm dealing with. What do you think about this? Because he's like a sage wisdom guy in my life. Right. Yeah. So to be like, OK, like I almost don't know what I think until I know what he thinks. It's like, yeah, I would say that, wouldn't I? I have done that, haven't I? Yeah. You know, sometimes somebody else has a better perspective on you than you do. Reagan, Reagan, just like every president had good and bad advisers. Yeah. And you're you're torn between all that. And there's there's political favors that that move your decisions or color your decisions. But Reagan managed to stay pretty well aloof of that fray. You know, he didn't he wasn't at the whim of sycophants or anything. He kept his identity pretty strong. And I'm proud of him for that. I I the movie, the movie wasn't as good as Reagan's presidency. But yeah, you know, I give Reagan Reagan's presidency a presidency, a nine, the president, a separate rating. The presidency gets a nine. The movie gets a six. OK. Yeah, I would say I wouldn't know what Reagan's presidency was like. I wasn't alive then. I gave the movie a five, honestly, some pretty close in rating there. You know, glad to see that you're able to sort of separate, you know, that political bias from not recognizing when a movie could do better. Right. Yeah. And that really was the case. Yeah. But I didn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie. I loved I loved watching the audience. Yeah. And I was glad that somebody made a puff piece like this at this particular time. Yeah. You know, it will be completely suppressed by the media. I would almost I would almost be I would almost sort of have a hunch that maybe there is a reason why this puff piece came out right now. No question. Election year, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? You know what Stephen K. Bannon says? Yeah. There are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences. Right. So, yeah, this is timed, obviously. Yeah. You know, it's a political tool. OK. And shame on him. But hooray for him, because the whole rest of the media is a political tool the other way. Fair enough. So, you know, it's like you want to condemn that. Look at yourself. Get the mirror. Get the mirror. You know, that's you. Yeah. Right. So anyway, thanks for recommending this movie. Yeah. I guess we kind of agreed. Yeah, we did. You know, it was timely and it was fun to watch and being both history nuts. I sure hope everybody watches it before they send in their mail in ballot. You know, thank you very much for watching this episode of The Real Generation Gap and make sure to leave a comment down below. What's your favorite, say, you know, presidential biopic or even just, you know, historical movie that you think does a good job? And what do you guys think of Reagan? Did you guys think it was just a cheesy puff piece or perhaps, you know, an inspiring story of a real man? Make sure to tell us that down below in the comments and make sure to join us for the next episode. Thank you very much.