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'Reagan' Is Everything the Right Gets Wrong About Art

'Reagan' is a tedious biopic that shows the American political right will always value propaganda over compelling human drama.

There’s a reason that hardline American conservatives regard so many books, movies, TV shows, music, theater, and other creative arts as ideologically poisonous, tools for “indoctrinating” people with “woke” values or “grooming” children to adopt an LGBTQ identity and become sexually permissive. Alternatively, you can pull together a lot of washed-up talent, including various actors who claim that they’re victims of discrimination in Tinseltown due to their right-wing views, to make a muddled bore like Reagan, starring Trump booster Dennis Quaid as the Gipper. They have so little trust in the audience’s ability to go on context clues that they needlessly label familiar scenery, too: A shot of the Golden Gate Bridge bears the words “San Francisco, CA,” while a cut to Big Ben looming over the Thames receives a “London, U.K.” chyron.

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