Author of books that inspired 'Reagan' movie reflects on wild disparity between critic, audience reviews

EXCLUSIVE - Author Paul Kengor said the "disparity" between the Rotten Tomatoes critics' score and audience score for the movie "Reagan" was comparable to President Reagan's landslide presidential win in 1980 as he recalled his books' whirlwind ride to the theaters.

The year's best reviewed films have been assembled, and the film, "Reagan," has one of the biggest disparities in recent years — currently sitting at a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. That's starkly different from the dismal critics' score of 18%. 

A writer for The Boston Globe called it an "interminable hagiography" and "a wretched 2½ -hour bore that's uncurious about its subject." A Washington Post critic called it "worthless" as a piece of history, while the Daily Beast called it the worst movie of the year.

Kengor said the disparity between the audience and critics' reviews reminded him of the 1980 presidential election, which Reagan won in a landslide against Democratic incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

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"Yeah, the disparity is really profound," Kengor said of the reviews. "In fact, it reminds me of what happened in 1984 when Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states, which is probably about 98% of the states. If you do the math on this, 49 of 50 states won about 60% of the vote, won the Electoral College 525 to 13. But you had these liberal critics who didn't like him, and they were very much in the minority. And I tell my students today, I tell other people, when you meet some liberal professor who is slamming Ronald Reagan in the classroom, just say, 'You know, professor, but how did the guy win 49 out of 50 states?' Right? I mean, he was liked, he was always liked."

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Kengor further argued that many of those critics didn't have the right perspective because they were born after Reagan's presidency.

"A lot of those 18% - now some are fair-minded critics who didn't like this or that about the film artistically … But a lot of them, when you read the reviews, they're clearly partisan. They're clearly ideological. And it struck me that - I looked up some of the reviewers," he said. "They were born after the Reagan years. And I think they just find it hard to imagine that there was a time in America when everybody liked the president. Even liberals who didn't vote for him liked him. They liked him as a person." 

The journey of "Reagan" to theaters began when filmmaker Mark Joseph called Kengor one day from Rock River in Dixon, Illinois, where Reagan saved 77 lives when he served as a lifeguard, saying he was interested in turning "God and Ronald Reagan" into a movie. Kengor was interested in the idea, but suggested his book "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," would make a more compelling film.

But it wasn't until 20 years later that it would finally hit theaters.

A key factor in finally getting the movie off the ground, Kengor explained, was securing Dennis Quaid as the lead.

"You know, we had three or four really big names promising at different points - and any of which would have been quite good," he said. "And then at one point, Dennis Quaid was available, interested. Mark Joseph reached out to him. They took him to the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara. And there they put him in the cowboy hat and then the denim kind of jacket, Reagan Ranch jacket."

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Kengor said a friend who had been previously critical of their movie process called him to say congratulations, and it was a "done deal." That's when Kengor said he realized how the industry worked. But the author said he was blown away by Quaid's performance.

"I can't imagine that any of them would have been better than Dennis Quaid," he said. "I really just marvel at how he nailed Reagan - the voice, the face, even the passion, the enthusiasm. All along, the trickiest thing was going to be to get someone to play Reagan who didn't look like he was doing a parody of Reagan."

Many moviegoers agreed with Kengor's assessment, according to the high audience score.

Kengor said he couldn't wrap his head around how many liberals call for "unity," yet when a movie comes along that does just that, they don't want it.

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"So we give them this really positive movie about unity, which is what they claim they want," he said.

"And they hate it, they hate it. They call it a hagiography, a movie about a saint. Well, it has a happy ending. We won the Cold War. We didn't have nuclear war," he said. "So a lot of the critics in those very low Rotten Tomatoes reviews, they just seem incredulous at the very idea that there was a time in America like this."

Fox News Digital's Hannah Lambert contributed to this report.