The President’s Analyst

Directed by Theodore J. Flicker, The President’s Analyst follows James Coburn’s Sidney Schaefer as he’s hired to provide psychiatric treatment to the American President – with complications ensuing after Sidney, now in possession of highly-sensitive state secrets, is pursued by various international intelligence services. There’s little doubt, ultimately, that The President’s Analyst fares best in its off-kilter and thoroughly promising opening stretch, as filmmaker Flicker, working from his own screenplay, does an effective job of establishing Coburn’s affable central character and the admittedly irresistible situation in which he finds himself. (It’s clear, too, that the movie benefits from an exceedingly compelling early scene detailing Sidney’s initial meeting with the agent bringing him into the political fold.) The movie’s transformation into a progressively tiresome endeavor, then, is triggered by a surreal and unreasonably broad midsection, as Flicker places a growing emphasis on Sidney’s far-from-engrossing exploits alongside a series of eye-rollingly over-the-top figures – with, especially, the protagonist’s interminable sojourn among hedonistic hippies ranking high on the movie’s list of half-baked, misguided elements. By the time the entirely ineffective third act rolls around, The President’s Analyst, armed with a whole host of comedic elements that uniformly fall flat, has unquestionably confirmed its place as a dated and completely misbegotten piece of work that has little of relevance to say all these years later.

*1/2 out of ****