Movie Review: Hyde Park On Hudson

by Coleen Singer. 

Synopsis:
In June 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and his wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) host the King and Queen of England (Samuel West and Olivia Colman) for a weekend at the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson, in upstate New York – the first-ever visit of a reigning English monarch to America.

With Britain facing imminent war with Germany, the Royals are desperately looking to FDR for support. But international affairs must be juggled with the complexities of FDR’s domestic establishment, as wife, mother, and mistresses all conspire to make the royal weekend an unforgettable one. — (C) Focus

Read on…

Erotic Scribes Review:
One might ask why this charming historic event movie ended up in our “Erotic Reviews” section.  The answer is, it is rather kinky in a 1930’s kind of way!  Whoever would have known that The First Lady had moved in with her girlfriend to get away from the President’s peccadilloes.  Not just one, but many – one of them his fifth cousin who moves in with him at the summer home of F.D.R.

If you haven’t seen this movie, by all means do so!  The combination of “The First Family” (a rough and tumble bunch of Americans) and the Royal Couple (who are somewhat aghast at the openness of all of this executive polyamory, as well as the thought of being fed hot dogs at a BBQ) is a set of characters and sexual attitudes not to be missed!.

The Washington Post nicely sums it up as follow:
“The problem with “Hyde Park on Hudson” isn’t its suggestion of FDR’s dark side. That complexity, and Bill Murray’s spot-on portrayal of a man juggling myriad pressures and demands, from petty to momentous, marks one of the film’s greatest strengths. It’s that Daisy rarely comes into her own as more than the pliant emotional helpmeet to the Great Man. In fact, we never quite see what he saw in her, other than the un-demanding, ever-available aide who can always be called on to “help him relax” (the most graphic instance of which is demonstrated in an early, strangely tawdry episode in FDR’s car).

Upholstered in good taste, understatement and genteel reserve, “Hyde Park on Hudson” both celebrates and gently skewers aristocratic mores, the high-WASP art of not noticing and an ancient cultural era when love affairs and the president’s polio could actually be kept secret. Precisely where the line should be drawn between appearance and reality in political stagecraft — international, domestic or intimate — is a question the film wisely leaves viewers to answer for themselves.”