I wanted to see this when it came out at the theaters and missed it. Then I kept planning on watching it when it came On Demand and for some reason I got it in my head that it was excruciatingly long and I kept avoiding it. Today I was feeling a little tired and decided to just relax and if a nap found me that would be great. Instead, this started just as I was settling in and that nap never found me.
It’s only two hours long. I still don’t know what made me think it was longer. And, in a testament to the director, Ron Howard, it didn’t feel like it was two hours long. I could have watched for much longer.
There had been much criticism of one of the more important scenes in the film because it was a total work of fiction (the drunken phone call from Nixon to Frost just before the last interview) so I was expecting to be skeptical of it all…but, really, the most compelling part of the film IS the interview – and that actually happened. While Michael Sheen and Frank Langella both did wonderful jobs (no surprise since they’re both great actors and had already perfected the roles on stage) I wonder if it would just have been as entertaining had I watched the real interview instead. (Both Langella and Sheen are more attractive than the men they portray in this film…I have to think the shallowest part of my mind latched on to that so the answer is probably “no”!)
My only wish is that Howard hadn’t allowed for any important scenes to be fictionalized (I don’t care when/how Frost met his girlfriend in real life…I just think the film had an opportunity to educate those who weren’t around for this or who were too young to remember and by truly fictionalizing some important aspects of the film, it’s tougher to do that).
Liked it. Would definitely tell folks to watch it at least once.