DVD review: John Adams

The life of John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States.

Directed by Tom Hopper, who then went to make the wonderful and amazing “The King Speech”, universally acclaimed with 4 Globes and 13 Emmys this miniseries in 7 parts should have been practically perfect.

After watching all 7 parts I can say that no, it’s really not that perfect, in reality is terrible tv, some of the worst stuff I’ve seen in a while.

The main problem lies in the plot. The founding fathers are to America what the saints are to Christianity. Practically perfect human beings who for entirely selfless reasons gave freedom to their country. Now this is neither the place nor the time to debate the veracity of this, suffice to say that what is perfect to build a national myth upon becomes incredibly boring when translated to the screen.

Of course I’m not saying that they should have invented something outrageous, we got the Assassin’s Creed series for that. Just that the John Adams that I saw on the screen is an insufferable character, even more boring than some of those Vatican sponsored lives of saints. At least many of them had a period of fun and debauchery before finding God, or a bloody martyrdom.

He never evolves, he is incredibly selfless and motivated from the first minute, all rousing speeches and inflamed rhetoric. It’s only flaw? He is too motivated and so he alienates those lazy bastards around him! It’s something that you normally see on CV. “What’s my defect future employer? I work too hard”. Terrible.

Not only John Adams himself, the whole miniseries is an incredibly long celebration of how awesome were the founding fathers and the whole revolutionary period. While the rest of the world is invariably lazy and sleazy.

Maybe Americans will find it nice, but for me one sided rhetoric never works.

I never got the impression that I was watching real people, they were all like cardboard figures from a bad history book.

The last episode then is the Piece De Resistance. Instead of closing with the end of John Adams political career, which is the part of his life that we actually want to see, they give us one hour of John Adams getting older and older while the world continues without him. We see him writing letters, toiling the fields and be generally insufferable.

I really don’t understand what is this fixation with showing the later days of important people in these biopics. Everybody grows old, it’s not that big of a discovery. You don’t stay on top forever and there isn’t any special insight in watching somebody getting older and older till they die. It’s just depressing.

Conclusion: Really terrible.