Frost/Nixon confirms Ron Howard as Hollywood’s most notable hack. A film without personality, presence or identity, it is in keeping with most of Howard’s work: plodding, self-important, and rigorously by-the-numbers. Fledgling filmmakers could learn a lot from his films; they are so formulaic they must ship with assembly manuals.
Another failure shared with a large swath of Howard’s filmography is how it plays fast and loose with facts. Thus it succeeds in doing what the film’s protagonists desperately want to avoid with their interviews: making Richard Nixon sympathetic.
It is virtually impossible not to compare it to Oliver Stone’s searing biopic Nixon, which is everything this is not – insightful, engaging, intriguing, epic. But Stone (in his prime) is everything Howard is not – visionary, incendiary, thought-provoking, original.
Frank Langella is game as Nixon, but when you look and sound less like the 37th President than Anthony Hopkins, you’re stretching it. And when you make a film less faithful to historical fact than an Oliver Stone flick, you should get out of the business of dramatizing true events. I would urge a viewing of Nixon instead of wasting time on this Hollywoodized drivel.
