I doubt I’ll be seeing Ricky Tollman‘s Run This Town (Oscilloscope, 3.6). Mainly because of Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, The Politician), who has one of those faces you can’t help but fantasize about punching or at least slapping. In this trailer Platt seems to radiate a certain dim-witted, candy-assed uncertainty and open-mouthed ambivalence, and hanging with him for 99 minutes would almost certainly be too much to bear. I hate this guy.
Pic follows Platt’s Bram Shriver, a Toronto reporter whose professional prospects are enhanced when he’s fed a cellphone video of then-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (Damien Lewis in a fat suit) smoking crack. You’ll notice that the trailer never gives you a good look at Lewis’s obese mayor. To go by Joe Leydon‘s South by Southwest review (4.16.19), there’s a reason for that.
Posted on 4.16.19: “It doesn’t help at all that Mayor Ford — who looms large, literally and physically, despite his status as a supporting character — is played by a heavily latexed Damian Lewis in a less-than-convincing fat suit. Lewis so closely resembles Mike Myers’ Fat Bastard character in the Austin Powers franchise that it’s practically impossible to fully appreciate his spot-on portrayal of a man with an unstable id checked only sporadically by an image-conscious superego (Donald Trump, anyone?).”
Has a fat suit ever worked in a dramatic film? Yes — John Lithgow‘s Roger Ailes in Bombshell. Other instances?
