A widowed U.S. President running for reelection and an environmental lobbyist fall in love. It's all above-board, but "politics is perception," and sparks fly anyway.A widowed U.S. President running for reelection and an environmental lobbyist fall in love. It's all above-board, but "politics is perception," and sparks fly anyway.A widowed U.S. President running for reelection and an environmental lobbyist fall in love. It's all above-board, but "politics is perception," and sparks fly anyway.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 1 win & 11 nominations total
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBefore the movie started shooting, Michael J. Fox was still keeping his Parkinson's disease a secret. He felt he would lose the role if Rob Reiner found out. During a basic and routine fitness screening, Fox was terrified that clinicians would detect the periodic shaking in his left hand and eventually connect it to Parkinson's. Fortunately for Fox, he took his medication in time to quell the shaking and the test amounted to nothing more than checking heart rate and blood pressure.
- GoofsAfter the President's big speech at the end of the movie, staff members are walking quickly back to re-write the State of the Union address. After Leon says "Well, you don't see that every day," Louis says "Yeah - he's got the members of the press corps asking each other how to spell 'erudite.'" Although the president never uses the word 'erudite' in his speech, erudite is an apt description of his demeanor during the speech. This was a reference to his demeanor, not a reference to something he said.
- Quotes
Lewis Rothschild: [in the Oval Office] You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism.
President Andrew Shepherd: Look, if the people want to listen to...
Lewis Rothschild: They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
- Alternate versionsCompany logos change between versions. For example, on the laserdisc, the movie starts with a 20-second silent Columbia logo (before the Castle Rock logo), and the end credits crawl includes (after the title of the movie has gone onscreen) a line-art logo "Released by Columbia Pictures/A Sony Pictures Entertainment company" that crawls up and stops, over the end of the music. On the international prints, the 1990-1997 Universal logo was played and it was also silent. The 1999 WB DVD skips the opening logo, starting with the Castle Rock logo instead, and where the Columbia logo at the end should appear as the music ends, a still clouds-and-shield WB logo appears instead (Distributed by WB/A Warner Communications Company). The Columbia versions are probably truer to the original theatrical release. See also The Shawshank Redemption.
- SoundtracksBrandenburg Concerto No. 5, BWV 1050, 1st Movement: Allegro
by Johann Sebastian Bach
This is not exactely a political thriller. In fact it is as far removed from reality as you could imagine. However that's the point, this film doesn't pretend to be anything other than a romantic comedy - it has some political wranglings but it is very far from the (still very tidy and clean) rule of Martin Sheen's President in TV's The West Wing. However the story is nicely handled and Rob Reiner is natually very good at this type of thing. Here it occasionally is far too sickly sweet and sentimental, but most of it works well.
Douglas is good in the lead and looks quite acceptable as the President of the US - lets be honest, if it was him or "oil baron" Bush who would you pick? Bening is also good as Sydney but neither have anything outside of the usual romantic leads to do. The real strength here is the supporting cast - both in terms of class and sheer enterainment value.To name a few - Sheen, MJ Fox, Mathis, Dreyfuss - all big names, all funny performances.
Overall this is a big sloppy romantic comedy, but it's done with so much class that it's hard not to like it. Not brillant, but very enjoyable all the same.
- bob the moo
- Feb 15, 2002
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- Американський президент
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $62,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $60,079,496
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $10,014,558
- Nov 19, 1995
- Gross worldwide
- $107,879,496
- Runtime1 hour 54 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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![Michael Douglas and Annette Bening in The American President (1995)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjhkMmU0M2YtZDUwYi00OWE0LWI5NTktODBjNDc1M2ZlMjI4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDAxNjkxNjQ@._V1_QL75_UY133_CR0,0,90,133_.jpg)