Idi (Forrest) great, movie is trash

Rating: 6/10 (28 January 2007)

Peole who go to movies surprise me by their ignorance time and time again. This movie covers the mood of an era and conveys the character of Idi Amin Dada really well, but the framework of the story is a totally fictionalized potboiler. People, please note almost everything you see that is supposed to be behind the scenes in the film did not happen! Other similar stuff might have, but this is not history.
Folk on this site have given the movie 8 or more because it is a good historical fiction, and then go on to comment how much more satisfying the movie could have been if they had done it properly. That in my mind makes this a mediocre move. Forrest is great, but at the end of the day he is imitating a very well documented person, with untold hours of historical material to work from.
In my mind a movie with as many fundamental flaws as this one does not deserve to be called great. Clearly the academy agrees as it has no director or picture nod. A bloke who is being another bloke is not acting he is impersonating, but how often does the academy award that! I just hope this year's winner is one of the actors who actually acts.That being said Will Smith and Forrest Whittaker do great impersonations in their nominated roles this year.