"My Fellow Americans" is not an especially deep or groundbreaking film--but it is marvelously entertaining. It's helped by very good dialog and very good acting to make what is essentially another road buddy picture stand out from the crowd.
This film begins with a prologue. In this fictionalized world, the US has had two recent one-term presidents (Jack Lemmon and James Garner). Neither was especially popular and both hate each other and come from the other political party. And, now that they are no longer in office, they both feel a bit useless. However, when the rather amoral new president gets in trouble for ethics violations, he's easily convinced to simply blame it on one of his predecessors (Lemmon). But, when Garner accidentally stumbles into this, he, too, is now in trouble with the evil new president. It seems that the new president is more than happy to now set up BOTH ex-presidents--and soon Lemmon and Garner are on the run from agents who seem eager to kill them. Can they avoid these crazed agents and help expose the truth? And, can they manage to get along long enough to get this done? While this film occasionally has lapses in writing (such as the getaway on horseback and the very end of the film), much of the time the film works when neither ex-president is doing anything other than argue with each other. This makes the film seem a bit like "Grumpy Old Men"--and simply having the two fine actors gripe at each other is more than enough to provide laughs and some fine moments.
By the way, if you do watch, pay attention during the horseback scene. You can notice that the faces of Garner and Lemmon was VERY clumsily pasted onto the stuntmen to make it look like they are doing the actual riding. It's amazing how much better such CGI has gotten since 1996.
This film begins with a prologue. In this fictionalized world, the US has had two recent one-term presidents (Jack Lemmon and James Garner). Neither was especially popular and both hate each other and come from the other political party. And, now that they are no longer in office, they both feel a bit useless. However, when the rather amoral new president gets in trouble for ethics violations, he's easily convinced to simply blame it on one of his predecessors (Lemmon). But, when Garner accidentally stumbles into this, he, too, is now in trouble with the evil new president. It seems that the new president is more than happy to now set up BOTH ex-presidents--and soon Lemmon and Garner are on the run from agents who seem eager to kill them. Can they avoid these crazed agents and help expose the truth? And, can they manage to get along long enough to get this done? While this film occasionally has lapses in writing (such as the getaway on horseback and the very end of the film), much of the time the film works when neither ex-president is doing anything other than argue with each other. This makes the film seem a bit like "Grumpy Old Men"--and simply having the two fine actors gripe at each other is more than enough to provide laughs and some fine moments.
By the way, if you do watch, pay attention during the horseback scene. You can notice that the faces of Garner and Lemmon was VERY clumsily pasted onto the stuntmen to make it look like they are doing the actual riding. It's amazing how much better such CGI has gotten since 1996.