I was hoping that Vice would have the humor and historical integrity (at least to a degree) that The Big Short possessed. Unfortunately it fell short.
Positively, the acting, particularly Christian Bale's portrayal of Dick and Amy Adams of Lynne, was superb.
However, Vice is trite and overblown. As The Atlantic review captures it: "The (invented) dialogue between the principal characters less resembles how conservatives actually talk than how liberals sometimes like to imagine they do, full of malice and disdain."
To be sure, Cheney is an enigmatic character who took strange turns and also did damage internationally. But there were many alleged conversations that made things look bad which have no genuine historic confirmation.
And particularly McKay's take on the 80's and the Reagan era, especially the rationale he gives regarding taxation, is nonsense. It fits Trump but not Reagan. It's almost as if he were labeling Reagan another Trump. Reagan has his issues but he's far removed both personally and ideologically from Trump. McKay's lack of nuanced understanding of the conservative movement in the past makes this film fall big(time) short and crash.
Finally, in a world in which Donald Trump constantly cries "Fake News," creating an epistemological quagmire in the public and political arena, this film with its shallow and blatantly false takes at times only plays into the hands of Trumpian Propaganda and does little more than add another brick in the wall of the great divide between liberal and conservative in America.
Perhaps McKay would have done better had he stuck either to humor alone or to enlist a quality historian as he did in The Big Short. He did not.
So unfortunate.
Positively, the acting, particularly Christian Bale's portrayal of Dick and Amy Adams of Lynne, was superb.
However, Vice is trite and overblown. As The Atlantic review captures it: "The (invented) dialogue between the principal characters less resembles how conservatives actually talk than how liberals sometimes like to imagine they do, full of malice and disdain."
To be sure, Cheney is an enigmatic character who took strange turns and also did damage internationally. But there were many alleged conversations that made things look bad which have no genuine historic confirmation.
And particularly McKay's take on the 80's and the Reagan era, especially the rationale he gives regarding taxation, is nonsense. It fits Trump but not Reagan. It's almost as if he were labeling Reagan another Trump. Reagan has his issues but he's far removed both personally and ideologically from Trump. McKay's lack of nuanced understanding of the conservative movement in the past makes this film fall big(time) short and crash.
Finally, in a world in which Donald Trump constantly cries "Fake News," creating an epistemological quagmire in the public and political arena, this film with its shallow and blatantly false takes at times only plays into the hands of Trumpian Propaganda and does little more than add another brick in the wall of the great divide between liberal and conservative in America.
Perhaps McKay would have done better had he stuck either to humor alone or to enlist a quality historian as he did in The Big Short. He did not.
So unfortunate.