Very disappointed :(

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Wilson was undoubtedly a stiff autocrat but was so far ahead of his time by about 30 years with his 14 points for a vision of a League of Nations. Some inaccuracies were inevitable but overall, it deserved the 5 Oscars which were awarded.Aside from the fact that Wilson's own personality may have sunk his 14 point plan, it must have been personally galling that Warren G. Harding's administration was arguably the must corrupt the nation ever saw until Nixon. There is no doubt that he was far, far ahead of his time with the result of WWII which might have been averted with a League of Nations.

. . . put out during a low point in U.S. public support for WWII, as Clint Eastwood's FLAG OF OUR FATHERS recently reminded us. This Bio-Pic WIL$ON found America on the verge of giving up the fight against Hitler and Hirohito due to lack of funding from a war-weary nation. Most U.S. citizens today are totally unaware that during WWII, ALL Hollywood movies had to comply with a 12-point checklist from the American War Department proving each film did enough to promote the U.S. war effort. Yes, this was on top of the 10-year-old program of "moral" censorship imposed on this self-proclaimed "free country." Yes, all this happened IN AMER!CA, even though it sounds like something that could only be dreamt up by Nazis. Therefore, WIL$ON glosses over Woodrow's life-long crusade against organized Labor and the American Common Man (hardly visible from Wilson's roots in Ivy League "ivory towers"). Of course, WIL$ON fails to point out Woodrow (campaign slogan in 1916: "He kept us out of the War") Wilson's voter back-stabbing decision to maim or kill hundreds of thousands of young American men then on the verge of making the entire country a "Union shop," with living wages, safe working conditions, and respect for normal citizens prevented us from achieving the very "peace on Earth" to which he was always giving lip service. Instead, Woodrow pushed the U.S. down the slippery slope toward the hopeless pit of Today, in which the "1 per cent" hoards 90% of Our Wealth, leaving the remaining 99% of us to scramble for the remaining 10% of Economic Crumbs. WIL$ON won five Oscars, just as German fat cats lauded director Leni Riefenstahl for her propaganda masterpiece--TRIUMPH DES WILLENS--a few years earlier.

Before I really get into the meat of this film, specifically why I wasn't impressed by it, I want to first mention what I liked about it. It was a gorgeous movie to view. The film wasn't afraid to use lush colors, especially in scenes in the White House's Blue Room. I also liked the use of period newsreels juxtaposed with (then) current, black and white footage of the actors. This movie was pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, it was not so pleasing to the ear and mind.There's really not much to Wilson from an intellectual point of view. It gives a very school book depiction of the man as the Ivy League President turned United States President. You can tell they tried to humanize him by putting a great deal of emphasis on his relationship with his family (especially in the first half), but in general the 28th President came off as dull and overly pious. I applaud Alexander Knox's effort, but it came up short for the most part. In general, the depiction of the characters came off as two-dimensional, cliché and generally hokey.When you factor that along with the overly sappy score consisting of "heavenly" choirs and slow, orchestral strains of patriotic tunes and terrible pacing (the movie was a little over two and a half hours, but it felt much longer), it's no wonder why it bombed at the box office. In an era when audiences had a much higher tolerance for over sentimentality, this one pushed it too far.

This epical film was made in 1944, during our darkest hour! I was lucky to have caught and taped it on AMC when it ran films without interruption.The continuity of 'Wilson', which for all its sweep covers only about 12 years, is bound along by a series of uplifting speeches--from his gubernatorial-candidacy stumping to wartime president--which are better in the hearing than in reciting in front of civics class. When I see yellowed photos of schoolchildren in class from a century ago, I imagine that these orations are what they heard Teacher recall. Still, I found delight in the brief glimpses of domestic, somewhat mythologized life of pre-Great War America in the Wilson household, probably not touched on in class. Imagine a family evening of singing tunes around the piano in these times! Two odd moments in 'Wilson' captivate my attention. In a minor shot concluding Wilson's nomination in 1912, he's asked to "Smile!" for the camera and does so, literally in one frame! (Try it on your freeze-frame.) And then there's the film's opening. Totally unexpected and rather outside the stern tone of what follows, we are treated to a fictitious slice of the Princeton-Yale football game of 1910--war on a field of friendly strife. This brief recreation of "stone age" gridiron play is utterly unique in feature film. It displays the fearsome-looking leather helmets--a few years after their faddish peak--which both intended to assure players' cranial safety and presaged the headgear many would don in earnest short years ahead. For college-football historian/fans, a time to mist up.We have too few class efforts on the filmed lives of our presidents, whether in whole or in part. 'Wilson' is one of these gems, in spite of understandable lapses expected in a film of its day.