• My tiredness (and laziness) combined with this movie’s underground nature means that the written review is BACK!
• First Written Review of 2016, can you believe that!?

Premise

• Southside With You is a new movie about the first date of Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson, both of whom are practicing law in Chicago in the late ‘80s.
• And even though Parker Sawyers doesn’t look THAT much like Barack Obama and Tika Sumpter doesn’t look THAT much like Michelle Obama, this movie is still pretty great.

Pros

• The major pro of this movie is the acting.
• Like I already said, the two leads don’t really look like the Obamas, but the leads completely capture their essence.
• It’s kind of like a Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs situation. They speak like their characters and do things that their characters would do, so it makes them look and feel more like the real life counterpart.
• Not only do these two capture the essence of their characters, but they’re great together too!
• You see how Barack impacts Michelle and vice versa. It’s really cool seeing this first date in front of you, seeing these two exchange ideas for the first time and seeing reactions that feel genuine.
• Another pro of the movie is the dialogue.
• I mentioned it briefly already, but these are two intelligent characters and I love that.
• This is the romantic movie that all Ivy League kids should see.
• Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson are two Ivy League educated adults and they talk like it.   Plus they’re practicing law, so they’re snappy with their smarts too.
• I love that these characters felt like future U.S. icons and not just two randoms in a rom-com.
• And the ending was cool.
• I won’t spoil the end for you, but it’s an ending that elevates the entire movie and just makes you think of it as even better than it was when you were watching it.

Cons

• Not TOO many cons for this one, but a couple…
• The dialogue is both a pro and a con because I loved the intelligent banter between the two, but sometimes it felt like too much.
• Like they go into some heavy legal stuff and sometimes the heavy conversations go on a little too long for my attention span.
• There’s one scene in a church that feels kinda like a Barack Obama origin story, where he’s talking like he’s the President, and that scene in particular was good, but just too long.
• The movie’s only 1 hour and 20 minutes.
• So it does feel longer than it is…

Review

• …but at the same time, the movie was shot well, I loved the actors, the dialogue was snappy and smart, and the ending really felt like it put a nice bow and the movie and made me want to watch it again, maybe when it’s on home video.
• So I’m gonna give Southside With You an A–.

***

But guys, those are just MY thoughts on Southside With You. If you’ve seen this movie, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments down below. You guys can go over to http://www.youtube.com/MyMovieThoughts to see more posts from me, or click around this site to see more as well. You guys can follow me on Twitter too, I’m @JohnMHayeck. So comment on this post, like it, share it around with some friends, and as always, thank you guys so much for reading.