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Description
John Adams is a sprawling HBO miniseries event that depicts the extraordinary life and times of one of Americas least understood, and most underestimated, founding fathers: the second President of the United States, John Adams. Starring Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Cinderella Man, HBOs American Spendor) in the title role and Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me, Kinsey) as Adams devoted wife Abigail, John Adams chronicles the extraordinary life journey of one of the primary shaper… More >>
Go & get it here - i can recommend it:
John Adams
My review stays the same, but I must add that I’m sorry if I offended all you “ubergeeks” out here that took personal offense by it and sent me some of your nastiest emails; verbally assaulting me, just for stating an opinion. I never realized that, supposedly, educated people could get so down and dirty. It’s a boring story about a boring, yet egotistical man. Why HBO chose to do a bio on him is beyond me. It’s like being Vice President; nobody remembers who he was after (and sometime during) the Administration’s over. Everybody knows Washington was the first president, but how many people remember that Adams was the second? This miniseries won’t change that! Hell if he was that prominent or significant, how come he doesn’t have his face on any currency? Maybe if they issue a $7.00 bill or a 75-cent piece then he’ll receive his due! LOL
McCullough’s excellent book is poorly treated in this mini-series. After watching the series you have no clue of what Addams or the founding fathers accomplished.
Addams and Hamilton are particularly poorly portrayed, you have have no clue to Addams fiery nature or Hamilton’s financial dynamo and the impact they had on the creation of the country.
The series is ultimately boring because it give us no insight into the great accomplishment that was the lives of these men and women.
Much like the movie Ray at the end we have not yet seen what made John Addams great. Read McCullough’s book or Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, they give a sense of great adventure and accomplishment of these men.
Let’s call a spade a spade–this was just not very good movie making. I forced myself to watch every episode but the finale (my dedication has limits). Each time I wanted the show to do well, but each time it left me oddly unengaged, as if I were getting the story second-hand from a disinterested correspondent. Is it the curse of the American revolution, whose story can’t seem to be made into an entertaining movie?
I really hoped and watched every episode. With the last one being the worst and totally unnecessary.
It is so sad that American can’t make a decent representation of time of “Founding Fathers”.
The fantastic Mr. Giamatti is “starched” due to the idiotic, cartoon like direction and teleplay of John Adams. Can’t they at least try to make these people human and show some of the true facts about these people.
The funniest character, or should I say, Disney animated status was George Washington. Due to the poor directing and writing that was inflicted on a fine actor, I think in the Hall olf Presidents in Disneyland has their George Washington animated robot showing expression and movement that this statuesque character.
So much of the depth, details, real struggles, real motives of these men were left out, making them and especially John Adams a humorless, pompous cliche maker, as if he had no thoughts but about the U.S.
They also just slid over the slavery issues.
The most puzzling and non-defined or man without a motive character was their poorly directed and define Thomas Jefferson. There was no way to have any feeling of who he really was and why he did what he did. Sometimes almost hippie like, an outsider, disinterested, turned into with no reason a egomaniacal playboy who just wanted to go to France and party and grasp the power of the country. Made no sense.
I am sure the book must be excellent, but another failure of giving the Father’s of our Country some humanity and dimensions. Read Gore Vidal’s Burr and watch the characters come alive off the page.
Poor John Adams, he got old and no body cared about him, too bad, so sad,
so pompous and so untrue.
I’m sure producer Hanks and whoever the director was just didn’t have any guts to show who these people were. The best part was the costumes.
jon
I agree with most of the negatives people have laid out regarding this series. I don’t think anyone who watches it can come away with an accurate view of Adams or the time period unless they have prior knowledge. I’m not going to give a long list of my disappointments with this film since they’ve already been said by others, but I’ll leave you with this one observation that has so far gone unnoticed or unmentioned:
IN TOO MANY SCENES, JOHN ADAMS LOOKS LIKE A FLESH AND BLOOD VERSION OF HOMER SIMPSON.