Donald Trump’s people have been threatening legal action over the indie film depicting his young years as an up-and-coming real-estate developer.
From the looks of things, they should save themselves the trouble.
The first clip of “The Apprentice,” starring Marvel’s Sebastian Stan as the young Trump, has hit social media. If the rest of the movie is like this, all I have to say is this: Congratulations, Sir Anthony Hopkins. Your totally implausible portrayal of Tricky Dick in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” is no longer the worst presidential impression on celluloid.
Just in case you missed the initial buzz around the film from its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May — where the champagne left applauded it, but notably didn’t give it a single award for, you know, actually accomplishing anything artistically — the film was described essentially a hatchet job which paints Trump as a vain, empty, mob-connected rapist.
“It presents a damning portrait of the former president as an ethically compromised, philanderer who stiffs contractors and cuts deals with the mob to get his buildings completed,” Variety reported at the time. “It includes other controversial details, including a scene where Trump rapes his first wife, Ivana, and depicts him abusing amphetamines to lose weight, as well as undergoing liposuction and plastic surgery.”
Despite that, the makers insisted that this wasn’t the quickie smear job it looked like.
The Ali Abbasi-directed film, Variety said, is “a story about the origins of a system … featuring larger-than-life characters and set in a world of power and ambition” that “delves into a profound exploration of the ascent of an American dynasty. It meticulously charts the genesis of a ‘zero-sum’ culture, one that accentuates the dichotomy between winners and losers, the dynamics between the mighty and the vulnerable, and the intricate psychology of persona.”
Or it would, if the audience isn’t going to be spending the runtime laughing at Stan’s unintentionally hilarious Trump impression.
The first clip shows Trump and the man the film portrays as his mentor, Roy Cohn. (The lawyer best known as chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his anti-communist crusades, Cohn’s closeted homosexuality reportedly plays a significant role in the film as well, because why not sling as much mud at the wall as you can.)
Do you have any interest in seeing “The Apprentice” in theaters?
Now, let me just say this from the top: Most Americans have a Trump impression they can do. It can be good, it can be bad, but we all have one. He’s a man that almost any individual can do an impersonation of.
Almost any individual except, apparently, the man who was cast to play him:
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
First clip from ‘THE APPRENTICE’, a biopic starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump.
Read our review: https://t.co/WLVeVK1A8y pic.twitter.com/RUNaCGVGie
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) September 3, 2024
I understand that the role Stan plays in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Captain America sidekick Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier — isn’t exactly Robert Downey Jr. territory, but come on.
You can imagine that this was not met with universal acclaim:
I was expecting a different voice.
— Sean Tajipour (@Seantaj) September 3, 2024
looks like an snl sketch
— ً (@americanreqiuem) September 3, 2024
……. This looks and sounds horrible. He looks nothing like him and sounds even less like him
— Jay Mac (@jaymc1128) September 3, 2024
Now, granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean the film is an absolute disaster — although, from all appearances, the only reason this got buzz at Cannes is because it slammed a political figure they didn’t like. Quelle surprise.
However, almost no attempt at acting — much less an impression — seems on display here. Judging by the quality of the directing, even the camera seems indifferent at what it’s capturing.
The producers of this film swore up and down that it wasn’t some kind of cheap hatchet job. Meanwhile, this is the one-minute clip they bother to show us and it’s so transcendentally bad you almost wonder how quickly this makes the transition to “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Something tells me they weren’t being quite honest about that hatchet-job thingy.
