John Adams (DVD, 2008)

For those of you who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like. As for me... I was drawn to JOHN ADAMS in hopes of learning something new and something true about the man and his ideas and his times. Instead, we are offered a historical love story stripped of much of its history and context. HBO took David McCulloch's excellent historical biography of America's second president and created a mini-series that is 90% John & Abigail and only 10% American History. John and Abigail were colonial farmers & rustic philosophers partly responsible for a radical new experiment in self-government. But HBO tries not to hold any of that against them. Instead, the filmmakers chose to concentrate on their REALTIONSHIP. As a vehicle meant to dramatize ideas and history, JOHN ADAMS is sadly lacking. The lavish costumes, manners and incidental details are there. Its just that there is no there, there (to paraphrase Gertrude Stein). No context, nothing -- or virtually nothing on which to hang the rudimentary "facts" we think we know about the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. Confined to Adams' viewpoint, the film stumbles badly. Its like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Momentous events unfold far away, off screen or not at all. Domestic events occur almost in real-time and always in excruciating detail. See JOHN ADAMS for the performances, (uniformly excellent); for the CGI wizardry (amazing) and for the costumes and make-up (accurate). Then read McCullough's book for the real history and ideas. That is probably the point anyway: synergistic marketing, they call it. I just call it history without history.