“I don’t want a cookie.”

All the President’s Men has been on my “HBO Max watchlist” for a while now, for the simple fact that I had never really seen Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman in their younger days before. On top of that, the premise was extremely intriguing - the story of the two men who uncovered the Watergate Scandal (made only a few years after it actually happened!). Unfortunately, this wasn’t really my type of movie, but I do definitely see why people would like it.

As I said, I was intrigued to see Redford and Hoffman, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. Both actors play their respective roles perfectly and play them with such realism, even if Hoffman’s character, Carl Bernstein, has a little bit of a goofy sense about him. I would definitely say that their performances as both of their characters were definitely the standout of the film for me. One thing I briefly wanted to mention here was that I was honestly shocked by a particular scene where Redford did a one-take that lasted several minutes.

It also has really excellent cinematography, but for the most part, what I was most impressed by with it was that it was kind of subtle at the same time. Most scenes are just framed really well, and not overly lit or, quote unquote, your “traditional cinematic look,” except for maybe a few scenes here and there. Most scenes just look and feel like they were filmed in a documentary, which leads me to my next positive.

This is obviously a very dramatic event that happened in real life, so telling it in a movie made enough sense, and the way it was told here, I think, was brilliant. The performances, as well as how the story plays out, feel so grounded in reality and non-exaggerated, and in fact, I looked it up, and this is apparently one of the most historically accurate movies out there. It’s a tone that not a lot of movies out there have to be honest, so I definitely give props to everyone involved in the making of All the President’s Men for that.

I also really liked the frantic intensity of everything that was going on, from the constant phone calls and sense of urgency that played through the whole film. It added even more realism to an already realistic-feeling movie, which was another thing that I can really appreciate. Without even knowing that this was super accurate to a historical event, I think one could still tell that there was at least quite a bit that they got right here.

Like I said, though, this movie just unfortunately wasn’t for me. The first thing that I wasn’t a fan of was just how “cluttered” the whole thing felt to me. There were so many things to memorize and so many things to keep track of that I have to say, I was pretty lost for most of the runtime. I obviously knew what the end goal was, but how they were figuring out certain details about it kept constantly going over my head to the point where I was really only frustrated the whole time. I almost think that making this just ever so slightly less historically accurate by making it easier to follow would have actually made it better. Or maybe there was a way of making it easier to follow without removing that accuracy, but I honestly have no idea.

The other thing I really didn’t like was just how repetitive all of it was. It felt like the story was literally constantly repeating itself over and over again, making me question if this was really even a story worth telling in a cinematic format. There just seemed to be a process of one of the leads finding out something important, which led both leads to a house to ask a bunch of questions to whoever it was. That’s what at least half of the story felt like to me.

I know I’m really far on the hot takes side of things with this one, but I can really just say that this was very much a “not for me” kind of movie. It’s well made, yeah, but its approach to telling its story really had me lost and worst of all, bored. Like I said, though, this is absolutely a movie I understand why people enjoy a lot. This definitely goes in the “I appreciate it more than I actually enjoy it” category of movies for sure.