Word: travoltas
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...doubt that the country has arrived at an uncanny cultural and political moment, consider this: John Travolta can do a better Bill Clinton than Clinton can. The President's performances these days are often subdued--seven weeks of stalling and refusing to explain his relationship with Monica Lewinsky seem to have shorted out his emotional connection to America. And now comes Travolta in Primary Colors, the Mike Nichols movie based on Joe Klein's novel about the 1992 campaign, with a portrayal so deeply and exuberantly Clintonian that it reminds you of everything you've ever loved and hated about...
...Travolta's Jack Stanton may be comic hyperbole, but the real Clinton at his best is just as overstated--a sprawling, irreducible character who belongs not in the cramped precincts of American politics but in the wide-open fields of American fiction, which is where Klein had the good sense to put him. But though Klein left enough wiggle room for a reader to create a different character in the mind's eye, the movie allows nothing of the kind. From the very first scene, that's him up there, and it's a shock--the first of many, because...
Unfortunately, the role of Harry Roat calls for an actor (I could stop the sentence right there) who can combine the unflappablecool of John Travolta with the chilly, proteanmalevolence of Richard III. Tarantino's Roatis...well, rote. He smirks. He grimaces as ifsomeone left a Royale With Cheese rottingbackstage. He "disguises" his voice using accentsso inauthentic, they make your high school dramaclub look like the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hegleefully brandishes a long, serrated knife withall the panache of a gawky video store clerk. Ifnothing else, you can tell he's having a goodtime...
...swivel chair. Weight stays, sways, in his hips. Shoulders, straight, shift with the strut. High and light. Street's all his, past doubt. And more, if he wants. Could be he might step off that concrete. Just start flying away. It's all there, in the walk that John Travolta takes through the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever...
More concerned were the makers of the film version of Primary Colors, due in March and starring John Travolta as a thinly disguised Clinton. "Even though the character's a philanderer," says a person who has seen portions of the unfinished movie, "he's portrayed as charismatic and good-hearted. You could even say noble." It sounds like an engagingly complex characterization, the kind of thing we need more of in movies. But director Mike Nichols must be wondering whether two months from now, after an onslaught of news reports, press conferences and (Why not shoot for the moon?) impeachment...