Inept telling of good story
This is the ideal week to release “LBJ,” because there is something of a Halloween costume about Woody Harrelson’s appearance in the film. He looks as if frozen midway into some morphing process between himself and Lyndon Johnson, a process that, by pure chance, happened to stop at the precise moment he began to look comical.
There’s the fake nose and the fake hair and, peeking out from the prosthetics, Harrelson’s eyes, which suggest a certain zaniness that we just don’t associate with civil rights and the Kennedy assassination. And then there’s the voice, which sounds nothing like Johnson and exactly like Harrelson at his most easygoing and engaging. It’s a strange thing, but Harrelson had more of a Johnson vibe as the frustrated colonel in “War for the Planet of the Apes.”
But no, let’s not talk about wars. “LBJ” is about the happy side of Johnson’s legacy, so all talk of Vietnam must be kept to a minimum. That’s director Rob Reiner’s prerogative, but it does make you wonder if some enterprising Republican director might someday make a movie called “Nixon” and deal with the opening to China and detente with Russia, leaving out all that unfortunate Watergate business.
Better yet, someone should do a documentary about that lively Civil War- era comedy “Our American Cousin” and omit mention of the Friday night performance that was interrupted by a brief disturbance. They might even ask Mrs. Lincoln what she thought of the play.
Yet for all this, “LBJ” is far from terrible — so long as you adopt the proper viewing strategy. Stop worrying, for example, that Harrelson doesn’t really look like Johnson, and reverse the thought. Imagine, instead, that this really is Johnson, but that he has a disease that’s turning him into Woody Harrelson. Then imagine how fun the movie might be were the disease to become contagious, so that, by the end, all the Cabinet members, including Bobby Kennedy, would be played by the same actor.
Yes, that would be weird, but the movie is weird as it is. It takes place in two time periods and goes back and forth from one to the other. The first covers the period in 1960 when Johnson ran against John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination and eventually became his running mate. The second takes place in 1963, just before and after the assassination, when Johnson decided to take up civil rights as his principal crusade. The jumping around gives the movie a start- and- stop quality, to no discernible purpose.
Jeff Donavan as JFK is a collection of verbal mannerisms, served up without nuance or charm, as if no one even bothered to watch the classic Robert Drew documentaries that show Kennedy’s private manner. Rarely has an empty performance ever been delivered with such confidence.
Michael Stahl- David does better as Bobby Kennedy, though the screenplay gives him little to do but act like an angry terrier on his brother’s behalf. His counterpart, in the LBJ corner, is Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, a one- note role that Jennifer Jason Leigh somehow invests with a wealth of warmth and feeling.
In the end, it’s history that saves “LBJ” from disaster. Reiner and Co. come in swinging and hit this era with every form of ineptitude they can devise — strange casting, comical makeup jobs, inept and obvious dialogue, an ineffective story structure, some genuinely bad acting, and the filmmakers’ determination to make a hero out of a problematic personality and president — but they still can’t make it boring. “LBJ” is a good story told badly, but a good story all the same.