A More Perfect Union: America Becomes a Nation

I'm a hopeless history nerd but this one somehow managed to fly under my radar. I wish I had seen this film as a kid but better late than never. I stumbled across it on YouTube and was at first slightly perplexed by its origin. Apparently in 1989 the Mormon college Brigham Young University produced a two hour movie about the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. And it stars the guy from Brian De Palma's Body Double (of all movies) as James Madison. Huh...well okay then. But to my surprise "A More Perfect Union" not only works as a great educational tool - it's also a well made dramatization. It's an admirable example of the quality that can be found in films of high concept despite low budget. I watched the whole film in one sitting and I was glued to it. The United States truly had some stone cold geniuses as its architects. I was genuinely touched by how well "A More Perfect Union" tells the story of our nation in its becoming.

This is not the worst movie I have ever seen. That said, it was awful. Rarely do I find myself laughing at a drama, but I can point out at least six times when I erupted into cackles. This film is about as subtle as a billboard.

First of all, the acting is SO forced and overdone (with the one grand exception of Ben Franklin, who has no idea what he's doing). James Madison is such an unstable cry-baby that one solid "Yo' Mamma is so fat" joke from Roger Sherman would have had him weeping all the way back to Virginia. In the music scene in the garden, I wanted so desperately for General Washington to say, "You know Jimmy, most men have been weened by your age...."

A huge problem with the film is that the main drama swirls around if the Senate should be represented based on the population of the state or if each state should have an equal voice. Call me crazy, but I never had a problem with the way congress is set up. I remember being a fourth grader in Ms. Pinder's class and thinking it was fantastically brilliant. So unfortunately, lines like "History will never forgive us for this" ("this" meaning equal representation in the senate) uttered by the protagonist of the film seem WAY over the top and ridiculous.

As a connoisseur of Mormon movies, I got a huge kick out of the casting. There were so many times when I was like, "Who IS that guy? Oh..... He's Pilate, from the 'Lamb of God.'" My personal favorite was how Doubting Thomas from "Finding Faith in Christ" plays a doubting Thomas. In fact there were so many actors from "The Lamb of God" and "Finding Faith in Christ" that I half expected the titular character of both films to walk on at any moment and hand them the Constitution.

Now let's talk about accents. The one pro-slavery southerner was the laziest accent actor I have ever seen. His idea of a drawl was clipping is -ing's into -in's. And he left it at that. Or how about the dude at the end who reads the constitution? He had a HORRIBLE Utah valley accent. (The fortunate thing about Utah-valley-dwellers is that they are totally unaware that they speak a variant form of English, so most of the people watching the film will be clueless on this point.)

Also, a personal note to Kurt Bestor: I expected much, MUCH more from you, sir. That score was like being hit with an ironing board. We know 15 seconds in advance before anyone says anything important because there's always an oh-so-subtle orchestra crash.

But I have to admit, as heavy handed as the script is on civic and theological points, it really has its moments. The tragedy is that each of those moments meets a massacre from the director and cast. Ben Franklin was SOOOOOO bad. I got the feeling he didn't really understand his lines--like he was ESL or something. I hated him before he was even on camera in the scene where Washington knocks on his gate and he fumbles on an otherwise funny line about women.

Or how about the concluding American Agrarian Montage? Look at us in our cute little montage! We're so American and agrarian! Heck, we're even equestrian!

So in conclusion, I loved the heck out of this movie in none of the ways it intended. It's horrible, and for that reason I would buy it in an instant if I could. BYU is capable of producing a great historical film, by the way. I recommend watching "Truth and Conviction" as soon as you're done with "A More Perfect Union" for a potent reminder as to why the institution is still accredited after producing such a piece of doo-doo.

I really enjoyed this film and think they did a fantastic job given the budget and casting limitations. The bad rating appears to be related to people not being "properly" entertained (acting and directing issues). This is not a movie designed to entertain like a typical hollywood movie. It's an educational film. The wardrobe and set design was fantastic and even the plainness of the "room where it happened" was interesting. It wasn't a fancy place or a pleasant experience, just a room full of divided intelligent men with a mission to create a government that will provide stability for generations after they die.

I think it's a timeless message that still rings true today. Many times I sat there thinking, wow... we are having these same arguments in 2020, but the historical perspective gave me a whole lot to reflect on and learn from people who had visions of equality and compromise built into one powerful document.

I loved this film and it's worth watching if you want to experience a period piece with a government and policy based true story. No one knows exactly what happened in that room or how people behaved, but the film does a great job of researching what it might have looked like given what we know about the people from their journals and letters that they used to express their strong opinions.

This film does an absolutely terrific job of explaining in detail the complex, intellectually demanding task of writing the US Constitution in one long summer. No buggy crashes or romantic affairs like many treatments would do-just a moving, meticulous representation of the difficult work of compromise and negotiating and endless redrafting between differing men with competing interests. Gives impeccable sense of what the real process was actually like without deification of or bowing to myths of the famous signers. I can't imagine a better-written drama about this pivotal event in national history.

I read the first four reviews of this production. The first three seemed to be fair and measured. I don't really understand the fourth. It appears the reviewer had some other issues with the maker of the film rather than the film itself. In any event I thought it was a good representation of the events at the Constitutional Convention. I've read a number of books written on the subject and this film seems to be true to the events that took place. This was a docudrama and as good as any that I have seen on the History Channel or PBS. I recommend it to anyone interested in the founding of this nation and if you're interested in reading more on the topic one of the better books but by no means the only one on the subject is The Summer of 1787:The Men who Invented the Constitution. I especially recommend this book for pre- teens and teenagers. Bribe them if need be but they won't find this information in Jr. high or high school.