The Front Runner

Hugh Jackman sports one of the most mesmerizingly bad wigs in cinema history to play Senator Gary Hart, the Colorado Democrat whose 1988 presidential campaign was destroyed by allegations of an extramarital affair. Based on the book All the Truth is Out by Matt Bai, The Front Runner is one of the most inane and gaseous political biopics in recent memory—the entire film seems like it was assembled by children at a Build-a-Sorkin Workshop. Director and co-writer Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) once again managed to create a film that is simultaneously robotic and sloppy, and you constantly feel him borrowing moves and moments from better movies without any concept of why they ever worked. The Front Runner is unbelievably naive in its cynicism about the tabloidization of the political process, ultimately (and possibly by accident because of ineptitude) making an anti-transparency argument that would appease the “fake news” dingbats.