Welcome to Mooseport

2004

Action / Comedy / Romance

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 13% · 144 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 20% · 10K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.3/10 10 14244 14.2K

small town maine ex-president mayoral candidate

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Plot summary

A US president who has retired after two terms in office returns to his hometown of Mooseport, Maine and decides to run for Mayor against another local candidate.

Director

Donald Petrie Photo
Donald Petrie

Top cast

Gene Hackman Photo
Gene Hackman as Monroe Cole
Christine Baranski Photo
Christine Baranski as Charlotte Cole
Maura Tierney Photo
Maura Tierney as Sally Mannis
Ray Romano Photo
Ray Romano as Handy Harrison
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
1016.11 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 2
2.04 GB
1920*1080
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  es  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 2

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by IonicBreezeMachine 5 / 10

While a bomb upon release and notable mainly for being Gene Hackman's final starring role before his retirement, Welcome to Mooseport is harmless if not substantial

In the small town of Mooseport, Maine, former President of the United States Monroe "Eagle" Cole (Gene Hackman) prepares to retire to his summer home in the town following leaving his position as the most popular President in history despite having gone through a messy and public divorce while in office from his wife Charlotte (Christine Baranski). As Monroe fields various book and speech offers through his staff, the town of Mooseport asks Monroe to fill in for the position of Mayor after their previous one passes away. Believing the Mayoral position will be good publicity for his soon to be published memoirs he accepts, only to find that at the same time he accepted local hardware store owner and handyman, Harold "Handy" Harrison (Ray Romano) has also filled out the forms for candidacy. While Harold is initially open to withdrawing from the race, Monroe's advances towards Harold's girlfriend of six years, local vet Sally Mannis (Maura Tierney), accepts a dinner date with Monroe hoping it will spur Harold towards commitment in their relationship but turns this small town mayoral race into a clash of pride and ego.Welcome to Mooseport began its inception as a rough outline by writer Doug Richardson, who was inspired by an offhand conversation he had with his wife regarding the possibility of then President Bill Clinton possibly running for some other office after vacating the presidency which served as the impetus for the idea of a former President running for mayor in a small town. Known primarily for action films such as Die Hard 2, Money Train and Bad Boys, Richardson saw Mooseport as an opportunity to branch out with Mooseport mining Richardson's personal experience from politics having been the son of a career politician. Due to Richardson's political background, he enlisted his friend Tom Schulman to write the screenplay while Richardson would produce and provide layouts so the film would primarily be seen as a comedy rather than overtly political. While initially setup at Disney where Schulman had an "in" with then chairman Joe Roth, a change in management resulted in Disney losing interest in the project and putting it into turnaround where it landed at Intermedia Films where it was eventually co-produced by 20th Century Fox. As Ice Age had proven a success at the box office, Fox pushed for Ray Romano to be the lead which is speculated as to why original director Rod Lurie dropped out leading to his replacement by Donald Petire. Upon release the film was a financial flop opening in fourth place with much of the potential audience for this film syphoned away with the hit Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore film 50 First Dates taking the number one spot in its second weekend. Critical reception was also quite weak with many describing the film as bland and its satire of American politics as pretty surface level. While welcome to Mooseport isn't all that great, it's not worthy of any sort of vitriol or contempt at least to the levels we saw in the wake of its release.Gene Hackman is his usual charming self, playing the retired President Monroe Cole and while it's unfortunate that such a rather unambitious but harmless comedy was Hackman's sendoff before retirement you can tell he's not sleepwalking through the film as he carries himself with charisma and charm that comes pretty effortlessly even in lesser films like his turn in Superman IV. Ray Romano is more or less playing exactly the kind of performance and humor you expect him to play, and while not bad it is part of the reason why so many people opted not to see this movie in theaters and instead saw it on planes or on home video. When you get right down to it, Welcome to Mooseport is a theatrical sitcom. It has sitcom characters, sitcom stakes, sitcom jokes, and sitcom deliveries and despite having a decent sized budget actual sitcoms have done more with this premise on primetime TV (see The Simpsons episode Trash of the Titans for example). The movie features a lot of pretty standard comedy staples and while there's nothing all that wrong with them per se, they do make the movie feel like something that should be playing on a small screen rather than something you should pay $8 for.Welcome to Mooseport is perfectly passable for the kind of film it is. While Hackman is still giving his all in this film, it's not a particularly substantive or inciteful film as it just goes from point A to point B making itself just okay enough that you finish it to the end without taking much away from it. I don't think this movie is all that "good" but when compared to other small town comedies like the abysmal Runaway Bride, or the awful Buck Henry penned political comedy First Family from 1980, Welcome to Mooseport is in no way shape or form deserving of the level of critical derision it received.
Reviewed by

Reviewed by studioAT 5 / 10

Raymond on the silver screen

Ray Romano makes the bold first step into feature films and judging by this films gross and other reviews it looks like his foot got burned.

This film is an enjoyable enough piece with a few good laughs and a decent story. Romano and Hackman work well together and Fred Savage is good as the Presidents aide.

It just lacks that killer punch that Romanos sitcom has and the jokes don't run as fluently as they could. Romanos character is so similar to his sitcom character that we are left waiting for his co-stars on the show to appear. Sadly they do not

Romano is a charming and funny guy and his charm carries the film and it is only when he is not on screen the film that the film really starts to flag. With the right script Romano could still have a film career but I think if he's waiting for the script for "Welcome Back to Mooseport" to come through his letterbox he could be waiting a long time.

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