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Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House
MOVIE: HBO, Monday 8/18 at 9:00p (38 minutes)
Starring
Helen Thomas,
and
Rory Kennedy
A rather short documentary from HBO about long-time White House reporter Helen Thomas.
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
| CREATED BY: |
Rory Kennedy
Liz Garbus
Jack Youngelson
|
| FIRST AIR DATE: |
August 18, 2008 |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
83
Entertainment Weekly Simon Vozick-Levinson
This doc fits her quippy recollections into 45 minutes, for a bite-size profile in tenacity.

80
Hollywood Reporter Ray Richmond
Kennedy brings out her subject, and presents the evidence of her greatness, flawlessly in a film that you don't have to be a liberal like Thomas to enjoy. (But it probably helps.)

80
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Thankfully, Thank You, Mr. President is less about Thomas' thorny relationship with the Bush administration than about her decades-long efforts to get power to speak truth, efforts she freely acknowledges ultimately had less effect on history than, say, the work of the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

80
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Rory Kennedy’s sprightly 38-minute film is largely sympathetic to Thomas, who covered the filmmaker’s uncle, John F. Kennedy.

80
Variety Brian Lowry
The relatively brief 40-minute duration, however, feels about right--enough to sprinkle tidbits about Thomas' interactions with Reagan, Nixon and Johnson without belaboring any of them, while giving the veteran scribe an opportunity to articulate her view of the reporter's role.

70
TV Guide Matt Roush
In the entertaining profile Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House, she offers candid reflections on covering presidents from JFK to Bush 2.

70
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Thank You, Mr. President is a quick profile of an imperfect but fascinating woman at the right hand of 20th century American history.

70
PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs
Smart, charming, and brief (at 38 minutes), Thank You, Mr. President is also resonant.

70
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Impressive credentials and precisely the sort that calls out for a nice meaty documentary. So it comes as a shock that the film runs less than 40 minutes and is bafflingly slight.

60
Washington Post Tom Shales
Thomas is an individual with strong opinions; it's too bad that Kennedy chose to tippy-toe around some of them.

50
Slant Magazine Sal Cinquemani
There's nothing provocative about a documentary that, unlike its subject, refuses to ask tough questions or dig below the surface.

50
The New York Times Susan Stewart
Ms. Kennedy, who conducted the interview at her mother’s Hickory Hill estate, doesn’t ask the kind of hard-hitting questions that her subject is known for and never brings up the more extreme statements Ms. Thomas has made since she left United Press International and became a columnist for Hearst in 2000.

30
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
The fawning HBO documentary Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas At The White House, [is] the latest unfortunate example of the increasing tendency to confuse public temper tantrums with good journalism.


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