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Created Jun 30, 2013 06:12PM PST • Edited Aug 29, 2019 06:26AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   White House Down is bombing at the box office, surprising both Hollywood and Channing Tatum fans.¹ Stiff opening competition from The Heat is part of the reason, but this heavily hyped movie’s commercial coup de grâce is almost certainly its coup d’état storyline. Plus, it’s far from a great movie by any standard.

   Being the second US Government decapitation movie of the season should have benefited White House Down, since the first one’s box office success proved that we’re sufficiently over 9/11 to be entertained by 9/11-like fantasies. Plus Olympus Has Fallen caused the patriotic bile to rise in our collective throats, triggering a dissociative effect that should allow us to enjoy this second movie as mindless action pic. Still, and notwithstanding Channing Tatum’s doggish charms, the movie can’t get past its truly horrific premise.

   OTOH, Olympus Has Fallen had favorable timing on its side, in particular coming before a pair of Islamist brothers brought mass terror back into a major American city by blowing up the Boston Marathon. It also came before Edward Snowden took a terabyte of top secret US data on a world tour of repressive countries. Yep, it’s been a bummer three months on the national security front.

   So we’re feeling less secure, part of why Presidents Jamie Foxx and Barack Obama aren’t nearly as popular this last weekend of June as they thought they’d be. Too bad for them and this movie.

   Here you’ve got a very appealing pair of stars in Tatum and Foxx, along with top notch action – tongue-in-cheek even – from Roland Emmerich, yet White House Down is a disappointing movie. It’s not awful. But everybody expected more after all the hype. Much more.
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   ¹ Hollywood’s Latest Bomb? ‘White House Down’ Struggling reads a Variety headline.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Channing Tatum is the most likable guy to grace the silver screen in a long time. It took me quite some time to accept that, starting with the hurdle of his too perfect name. Now costar Jamie Foxx has turned that central-casting name into a funny ditty called I Wanna Channing All Over Your Tatum. Pity that Channing all over the White House isn’t enough to save the movie.

   Jamie Foxx channels Barack Obama effectively, complete with a disarming foreign policy. He too can’t save the movie, though the two of them are plenty appealing as buddies. Garcelle Beauvais cameos as his Michelle-like wife.

   Their supporting cast range from OK to pretty good.

   • Maggie Gyllenhaal disappoints, per usual, as a Secret Service agent.
   • James Woods doesn’t disappoint as her boss, albeit to little effect.
   • Joey King proves strong and affecting as Tatum’s plucky daughter. Girl’s got a future.
   • Jason Clarke is fine as a traitorous commando. Much has been written that this is the same actor who played the CIA interrogator in Zero Dark Thirty, and here plays a truly villainous soldier. So what. Hollywood is Hollywood, always looking for an angle to sully our Armed Forces.
   • Richard Jenkins is fine as the Speaker of the House, though his current popularity as a character actor remains mystifying. The guy doesn’t exude much character.
   • Nicolas Wright is mildly amusing as a grind of a guide.
   • Lance Reddick disappoints as a martinet General.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Blow up the White House? Roland Emmerich has 100% more experience this time, coming back for seconds after famously having aliens do the deed in Independence Day. Pity that this time his leering camera is pornographically intimate in a way that feels almost creepy. His grasp also extends to Air Force One. Why not. Just a couple more FX shops needed to bring it to life, and then spectacularly shoot it down.

    He goes wrong with the story however. Americans in the main tend to reject Left Wing nihilistic fantasies, of which White House Down is another in a long line.

    PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW

    Thus this time it’s not external enemies waging asymmetric war on the United States, neither Islamists or the North Koreans from Olympus Has Fallen. Oh no. It’s a Right Wing cabal in the pocket of the Military Industrial Complex, not far from what some Leftie commentators hopefully suggested would be the case in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing. MSNBC hosts would be going “TOLD YA. SHOULDA LISTENED.”

    Thus White House Down is significantly more sickening than Olympus Has Fallen. It’s less jingoistic, but that ends up a bad thing since we prefer our fantasy battles to be against enemies foreign, not domestic.

11. Direction OK 2.5

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.0

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.2

    White House Down is not just surreal, it’s downright supernatural. That’s not its problem however. Its problem is the gag-inducing fratricidal story described in the Summary and Film commentaries above.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.5

24. Physical Surreal 3.0