# Primary Colors (1998)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

    PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

I love it when a film like Primary Colors (code name: The Big Lewinsky) opens amid waves of controversy because of its star or its content. Remember when Hugh Grant got busted with the hooker right before Nine Months came out? The unintentionally perfect timing of the release makes people scrutinize the story and, more specifically, the dialogue even more than they ordinarily would. I mean, there were a LOT of inadvertent blowjob references in Nine Months if you REALLY listened. Even the tag-line prophesizes the lead-in on the evening news ("What Went Down on the Way to the Top").

Colors starts right away with the unplanned comparisons to today's headlines as it shows a campaigning Jack Stanton (John Travolta) and his amazing handshaking technique. The right hand is just for shaking, while the left hand is used as a barometer to judge the recipients importance, based on how high it ends up on their arm. You can't help thinking about his right hand squeezing some bim's hooter while his left hand is gingerly pulling hers toward his crotch. Yikes!

The fine art of the handshake is being explained to Henry Burton (Richard Lester), the idealistic grandson of a great black civil rights leader. Henry is being wooed to join Stanton in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He is skeptical at first, but quickly chooses the puffy white Stanton (the Governor of an ominously unnamed southern state) over his current mentor, a black Congressman who has left Henry quite disenchanted with politics in general.

Henry realizes that he has finally found the rare politician who actually cares about the people he represents. He weeps as he first sees Stanton in action at an adult literacy center in New York as his new boss tells a marvelous story about his war-hero uncle who couldn't get a job because he couldn't read. Henry stays on board despite finding out that Stanton not only made up the story, but also scheduled the appearance just to bed the teacher.

The bumbling teacher is just the tip of the adultery iceberg and not the only stumbling block en route to the oval office. There is the marijuana thing. There is the draft-dodging thing. There is the matter of having an arrest expunged from his permanent record. And, of course, there is the mass consumption of barbecue and donuts.

The film is held together by director Mike Nichols (The Birdcage) and scribe Elaine May (Ishtar), as well as lenser Michael Ballhaus (GoodFellas). They capture the conniving underbelly of modern politics with a keen eye and make us interested in a story that we have all heard again and again.

Travolta is amazingly Clintonesque as Stanton, a role that I never believed he could pull off. He has the raspy voice, the waddle and the look of genuine concern down cold. Thompson is not very Hillaryesque, but this would be the side of her that the public never sees. The juiciest roles are saved for Billy Bob and Kathy Bates, the former a pervert and the latter a lesbian. They play expert political strategists with a large dollop of unconditional lunacy, stealing every scene they're in. Newcomer Adrian Lester is quite capable as the green central character and exudes the innocent charm of a Joe Buck or even a Dirk Diggler. Larry Hagman has never been better as Stanton's rival, Freddy Picker. But I never watched Dallas, so take that statement with a grain of salt.

Colors has the same kind of fly-on-the-wall, behind-the-scenes feel of the last two Betty Thomas films, The Late Shift and Private Parts. It is powerfully entertaining and thought provoking for the first two hours, but the last 30 minutes become a bit heavy-handed with its tiresome ethical message of `doing the right thing'. The performances and gratuitous vomiting scene alone make it well worth the trip to your local cinema.

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