Best movie of this year hands down!

Really Surprised!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Greetings from Lithuania."Primary Colors" (1998) is superbly entertaining motion picture, telling a story of a campaign for president post, and how all the dirty thing eventually come up. This is superbly paced picture, which at long running time 2 h 20 min. doesn't drag for a minute, yes, it is that involving. Scipt is terrific, sometimes very funny (but it is not slapstick comedy) and smart. Acting is brilliant. Everyone in here shines, John Travolta is superb in here, as well Billy Bob Thornton and all the rest - it is a superb cast doing a superb work.Overall, "Primary Colors" is as much about politics as it not about politics. Well, it's actually about politics, but this movie can be watch by those who don't like politic in general, this movie is a true gem. And by the way, i think i would have voted for Picker.

The movie is well made and the acting is very good, but I still don't understand why getting Governor Stanton elected is so important? He seems to be a lovable philanderer with absolutely no personal morals. He seems to really care about people in the macro sense but not in the micro sense. If he did he would not act so callous to his friends and wife and lovers.Why was getting Governor Stanton elected so important? It seems like this film was made for people who believed that getting a Democrat elected, even one who had grave personal failings was more important than getting a Republican elected. That is where I feel the movie was weak. In 50 years moviegoers are going to be asking themselves this question who were not alive in the 20th century to understand how hated Republicans where in the 90s. Great political movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington establish the need to get Jimmy Stewart elected. This movie does not establish the need to get John Travolta elected.

Primary Colors is yet another political drama, that pretty much bored me to tears. For starters, while I am a big John Travolta fan, he is completely miscast in the title role. As other reviewers have noted, John tries so hard to be like Bill Clinton, that it completely falls flat, in my opinion. They even go as far as to mimic, the whole Gennifer Flowers and Bill Clinton thing, there own way. It just tried so hard to reflect back on the Clinton Era, it almost became laughable. The characters in this movie themselves, are pretty unlikable. I had a lot of trouble rooting for Jack Stanton's character ,he seamed awfully weasel like, from what I saw. Fans of the whole Clinton era, and politics in general, may get a kick out of this film, but it honestly wasn't for me.Performances. John Travola tries hard ,sometimes too hard. It's just he ends up making an impression more then anything else ,and his charisma can only take him so far. He is heavily miscast, even though the Director, Mike Nichols, tries so hard, to make him look and act like Clinton. Emma Thompson is OK as the wife. She has no real chemistry with Travolta, and they didn't feel that real to me. Billy Bob Thornton is not bad in his role, but he didn't make that much of an impression. Kathy Bates adds class to any film she's in, unfortunately the script Doesen't give her much to work with. Adrian Lester does pretty decently with what he has to do ,I enjoyed a few of his scenes with Travolta. Maura Tierney is cute and charismatic as Daisy, I rather liked her.Bottom Line. Primary Colors, is pretty much a big bore. I shut it off after 75 minutes ,because it failed to engage me. Politics are just not my thing. Maybe one of these days ,I'll find a movie about politics, that does interest me.4/10

First of all, I gotta say that I love it when Hollywood takes on political subject matter, because it almost is always so rife with liberal wishful thinking. Maybe Bulworth wasn't, but when I think about this movie, The Contender, & The American President, its always so cute to see Democrats in charge & the only question of which way to proceed is one made within the party's ranks. I'll be honest, I sure wish that things were more like that. However out in the real world, the actual American President doesn't care about guns or global warming, there could never be an atheist contender for the Vice Presidency, and getting the Democratic nomination is not THE major obstacle to becoming the next President. Did you notice how that last fantasy listed was the one that occurred in Primary Colors? Republicans were never even shown in the movie, just mentioned a couple of times. By the end, we saw a candidate have the Democratic nomination in the bag, and then it flashed to a scene of him dancing at his inaugural ball. When you look back over the last 40 years (as of 2008), you see that Democrats have occupied the White House for 12 of them, or 30% of the time. So when are these Hollywood writers gonna start acknowledging that fact? As I watch the film now, I am just constantly reminded of how very different everything is in politics from the 90's to today. This movie was all about Democrats vying for the White House. And how much of the policy talk in this movie involved national security and military issues? None as far as I could tell. As long as the Democrats continue to be the mommy party, talking about nothing but education & health care, they're going to be either the minority party, or really close to it, forever. Now I did enjoy the movie, and the performances were excellent, especially from Adrian Lester and Kathy Bates. The whole film was essentially a chronicle of how a politician could be so brilliant and such a bright, shiny hero to the people at times, and also a low-down lecherous screwup at other times. I like that sort of depiction of people in stories & movies. And it is truly the Bill Clinton story. One biographer called him the Michael Jordan of politics, and yet most people remember him more for his womanizing. Bill Clinton may have been a flawed guy, but at least he was an interesting and brilliant political figure. And he does make for an interesting character study. It is just a shame that in this country, interesting Democrats hardly ever get elected President. They just don't appeal to the American people the way cookie-cutter Republicans can.