HYDE PARK ON HUDSON: Murray's FDR is DOA

HYDE PARK ON THE HUDSON possesses all the elements necessary to make a memorable and enjoyable movie. It's got a fascinating and charismatic central character, an intriguing true story, and a great cast.
Unfortunately director Roger Michell fails to pull the parts together to create a satisfying whole.
The end product is flat and unrewarding with an undertone of humour that mostly misfires.

The story focuses on the affair between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his fifth cousin Daisy Stuckley, which was conducted under the nose of Mrs Roosevelt at the family home of Hyde Park on the Hudson River in upstate New York. Most of the action centres on the summer weekend in 1939 when the President hosted the new (and young) British monarch, King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth at Hyde Park.
Daisy (Laura Linney) is the amused observer of the turmoil the Royal visit inflicts on the Roosevelt household, and of her lover's determination to democratise the stuffy and traditional King by feeding him hot dogs at a picnic.
Roosevelt was one of America's most influential and charismatic Presidents, a man who changed the course of history by force of personality, but if Bill Murray's impression of him is your first introduction to the great man you'll be hardpressed to understand what all the fuss is about. Murray plays him mostly as a bon viveur with an eye for a pretty lady, but not much else. There's little indication of the visionary and master political operator who moved the United States from sleeping giant to world superpower status in less than a decade.
Murray fails the most basic test in neither looking nor sounding like the man, and it smacks of stunt casting to have a comedian who made his name in 'Ghostbusters'. 'Caddyshack' and 'Stripes' playing FDR. I'm certainly not arguing against an actor's right to grow and take on parts different to those which originally made them famous. Murray has amply demonstrated his range and versatility in films like 'Lost In Translation' and 'Broken Flowers' but I'm not convinced he's convincing as a real-life President.
Ironically, it's not Murray - the famous comedian - who provides most of the film's humour but British actors Samuel West and Olivia Colman as George and Elizabeth. The Royal couple were still finding their feet on this now famous first visit to the USA, but they won a lot of friends and helped cement the 'special relationship, between Britain and the USA which proved essential in determining victory in World War II. So it's more than a little baffling that director Michell has chosen to portray them as a couple of chinless, clueless aristocratic buffoons. Other than the stutter, West's King George bears no relation to Colin Firth's magnificent, Oscar winning interpretation in 'The King's Speech.'
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON is a wasted opportunity. It fails to engage as a drama, a comedy or a dramedy, and exudes no real sense of the historical importance of the characters or events it portrays. This is lazy superficial history telling and all involved deserve better.

POSTAL INSPECTOR: going postal - in a good way

POSTAL INSPECTOR crams more action and "who knew?!" moments into its 58 minutes running time than many other films manage in twice the time.

Who knew that a small boy could play a mouth organ within the confines of the crowded cabin of a passenger plane and not have it rammed down his throat ? Who knew that a nightclub singer could make herself heard above the noise of the plane's engines to soothe those same passengers with a song ? Who knew it's possible to fit four musical numbers, a romance, a bank robbery and a flood of biblical proportions into less than an hour? And who knew the US Postal Service had it's own police force?
Universal's 1936 POSTAL INSPECTOR is an endearingly low budget peon of praise to those men who kept the mail moving through all manner of natural and man made disasters while also relentlessly pursuing those who'd committed mail fraud. In amongst the songs, the snogging and the storms the film also finds time for comedy with a parade of plain honest folk parading through the Postal Inspector's office with the useless gadgets and contraptions they've been conned into buying from mail order adverts. 
Inspector Bill Davis is the unflappable USPS employee for whom all of the above is in a day's work. As played by the heavy lidded Ricardo Cortez, Davis takes all of this in his stride while also keeping a paternal eye on his younger brother's burgeoning romance with nightclub singer Connie Larrimore (Patricia Ellis).
And if all of this isn't reason enough to invest an hour of your time to watch there's also Bela Lugosi in a rare non-horror role as Connie's shifty manager, a bad impression of President Franklin D Roosevelt, and a cruelly uncredited Hattie McDaniel duetting with Ms Larrimore.
The plot's riddled with more holes than a chunk of Swiss cheese, and the acting's not going to win any awards but POSTAL INSPECTOR is a thoroughly enjoyable romp and an entertaining example of the now long extinct B-movie.