Chicago Sun Times, 27 April 2005
By Paige Wiser
**Thanks, Lena

It takes a good 20 minutes to get past the acting in "Warm Springs." The more cynical viewer knows that this is the kind of production built for awards season, and that Kenneth Branagh was at one point probably shouting at his agent, "A morally flawed, handicapped politician? Get me this role or I'm bloody well jumping to ICM!"

His agent did good. As the polio-stricken Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Branagh grimaces! He weeps! He disgraces himself with drink! My God -- will he walk again?

But the story is an important one, and the humanizing glimpse into one of America's favorite heroes is worth sitting through the occasional showboating scene.

Branagh, of course, is convincing enough as Roosevelt. Not only does he master Roosevelt's radio voice, but he does it while keeping his cigarette holder in his mouth. Yes, he seems a bit cartoony, but judging from the vintage footage, so did FDR.

Branagh embodies the president-to-be at the critical turning point of his life. In 1921 the former vice presidential nominee contracted polio, a "children's disease," at age 39 (the movie suggests he may have caught it by drinking the water at a boys' camp). In a wheelchair, believing his political career to be over, and with his marriage strained at best, FDR retreats to rural Warm Springs, Ga. It's a long shot, but the minerals in the waters there are said to be miraculous.

At first, it's clear that FDR wants to hide from the world. Then he begins to believe in the cure. But as he takes in the poverty of the region and adapts to his physical limitations, he finds renewed purpose. It's jarring to realize that, as someone feared to be contagious, FDR was forced to eat in the cramped back room of the resort with the other polio sufferers.

In Georgia, he meets Tim Blake Nelson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?") and Kathy Bates, dedicated workers with quiet wisdom who make him look beyond his own troubles. And, fear not, wife Eleanor makes the trip down South, too. Cynthia Nixon (Miranda from "Sex and the City") does a serviceable job as the saintly "Babs," with the help of some prosthetic teeth and an old-lady voice.

The dialogue can be predictably uplifting ("If you fall, then you show them how to get up!"). But "Warm Springs" portrays an enlightening episode that doesn't figure in many history books. Not only did Roosevelt clean out his trust fund to buy Warm Springs, but he died there, in the tiny cottage known as "the little White House," in the 13th year of his presidency. It's still a rehabilitation center today.

We haven't forgotten FDR or his impact. (That was him singing "Tomorrow" in "Annie," after all.) But it's one thing to know that he guided the nation through the Depression and a world war; it's quite another to watch him make people forget he's a paraplegic (and lousy martini mixer). "Warm Springs" suggests that FDR's physical weakness wasn't just a political setback -- it was the source of his strength.