Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

'Southside With You' Obama Date Movie Creates Sparks (Among Critics)

By Andrea V. Watson | January 25, 2016 9:55am | Updated on August 26, 2016 3:50pm
 Parker Sawyer and Tika Sumpter play Barack and Michelle Obama in a new movie about the couple's first date that's been filming in Hyde Park.
Parker Sawyer and Tika Sumpter play Barack and Michelle Obama in a new movie about the couple's first date that's been filming in Hyde Park.
View Full Caption
Courtesy of IM Global

CHICAGO — The shot-in-Chicago film about President Barack Obama's first date with his future wife Michelle Robinson is in theaters now, generally winning positive reviews from the nation's top movie critics.

The film about their 1989 date — they went to the Art Institute, saw the Spike Lee film "Do the Right Thing" and had ice cream at a shop at Dorchester Avenue and 53rd Street — was written and directed by Richard Tanne. The two were both working at the Sidley & Austin law firm, she as a 25-year-old lawyer, he as 27-year-old summer associate.

Here's a sampling of opinions:

New York Post: "The mollifying figure on display here bears little resemblance to the hyperpartisan president Obama turned out to be, but it’s sweet to remember things could have been different."

Chicago Tribune: "For the record, the subjects went on to eight years in the White House. The more you consider those years fruitful, the more you'll like 'Southside with You.' "

Variety: "A pointed, flowing conversation about the many challenges (and varieties) of African-American identity."

Associated Press: "A sunny, strolling odyssey through African-American life in 1989."

New York Times: "Writer-director Richard Tanne mistakes faithfulness for truthfulness. He’s so cautious and worshipful that there’s nothing here to discover, only characters to admire."

Vanity Fair: " 'Southside With You's' premise offers a chance to get to know Michelle, to see her intellect and ambition before her identity is forever tethered to Barack's. It's unfortunate, then, that Tanne has written her so stiltedly."

The Guardian: "This movie is somewhat allergic to subtlety. Characters face forward and blast one another with sincere oratory, stating precisely what they feel as if they are under oath or shot-up with sodium pentathol. But as one’s ear adjusts to the, let’s call it 'stylised dialogue,' it preps you for some pretty striking speeches by the third act."

Sydney Morning Herald: "There are personal touches: she talks about growing up playing piano and learning French in a family where 'education was always priority number one.' He picks her up in a battered car with a hole in the floor, listens to Janet Jackson on the radio as they drive and tries to hide his smoking habit."

MTV: " 'Southside With You' will undoubtedly draw comparisons to Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” trilogy because at its core, it’s a lovely film about two charismatic people walking, talking and slowing falling in love over ice cream."

Last Vegas Weekly: "The dialogue sometimes sounds like the characters [are] reciting their own Wikipedia entries."

As for the real Obama couple?

No word yet on whether the Obamas have seen the film but singer John Legend, the film's executive director, is a friend of the First Family.

Here's a clip from the film, in which Barack Obama starts their first date by saying "it's not a date."

Director Tanne says he wanted to make the movie after being "fascinated by that look that Barack and Michelle give each other." The movie was shot in parts of Hyde Park, Altgeld Gardens, Lakeview and Downtown.

 

For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: