"Lightweight" may be the last adjective one would use to describe Arnold Schwarzenegger -- physically anyway -- but "See Arnold Run," a new cable movie about the muscle-bound social climber, is a lightweight pure and simple, especially simple.
It's easy to understand the script ignoring "Hercules in New York," a clunky howler that Arnold made in his youth, but in his second shot at a movie career, he did rather well. Perhaps dressing up an actor to look like Arnold as the Terminator would have required more legal work than the producers could afford, what with copyrights being the big cans of worms that they are (and "Terminator" having been a Warner Bros. release).
Anyway, "See Arnold Run" -- premiering on A&E tomorrow night at 8 -- gives us the first and third acts of Arnold's life, his bodybuilding phase and his wacky run for office, and apparently assumes we know all about Act 2.
If Arnold's dominance at the box office was unlikely, so was just about everything else the Austrian-born optimist did, and if there is a point to his story as the movie tells it, it's that nothing need be unlikely for anybody who is determined enough to make it happen. At least -- in America. Yes, it's the old Horatio Alger story, but watching it come true again has its inspiring side. "See it, believe it and never stop working to make it happen," Arnold says during a segment of the film in which he brings a muscleman pose-down uptown, to the Whitney Museum in New York. There, under colored lights, Arnold flexes and stretches to, of all things, the theme from "Exodus."
The screenplay cuts back and forth between two parallel watershed moments in Arnold's life -- his attempt to win the title of Mr. Olympia for a fourth time in 1974 and his battle to become governor of "Kulleefawnya" nearly 30 years later. Both accomplishments were formidable; however silly-looking a "sport" bodybuilding is, winning the Olympia title four times in a row was unheard of.
Arnold's bid to become governor -- initially scoffed at by nonbelievers -- did not come about in the normal way. In the freak-show state, few things come about in the normal way. Though Arnold was one of a large field of candidates seeking the office when the electorate demanded a chance to recall the governor, dull Gray Davis, the movie simplifies the election and reduces the competitors to two: Arnold vs. flinty feminist Arianna Huffington.
It was the battle of the impenetrable accents, all right. The movie makes Huffington something of a meanie, but Nora Dunn, one of the few well-cast actors in the picture, seems determined not to stoop to caricature.
In addition to the two main story lines, both of which involve Arnold deftly defying skeptics, there are flashbacks, in black-and-white, to Arnold as a little boy trying to win athletic contests while his imperious father looks on. In their superficial way, the makers of "See Arnold Run" are asking "What Made Arnold Tick?," answering with that old reliable Freudianism, "His daddy didn't love him."
"See Arnold Run" breaks with one old movie tradition but not very sensibly. It used to be that when real people were portrayed on the screen, they were almost always played by actors who were much more gorgeous and glamorous. That's flip-flopped here. The real Arnold hugely outshines grim Jurgen Prochnow, the dark and scary creature chosen to play him in this film. Prochnow does avoid doing a simple Arnold impersonation, but his attempts to seem playful are grisly; he's a walking pall.
Similarly, Mariel Hemingway, though she certainly has looked beautiful on the screen, seems a shabby substitute for Maria Shriver, Arnold's press-wise wife and ambassador to the Kennedy clan. "Politics is hell -- worse than hell," she warns Arnold when he thinks about running. "I know. I am the media!" There's lots of other pillow talk that sounds like it never got talked, including a cutesy scene in which Arnold peruses the U.S. Constitution, in bed, to see if it can be amended so he can run for president.
Arnold maneuvers his way through various gaffes and crises as a campaigner. He puts down old suspicions about his father, Gustav, being a Nazi, and tries to dismiss stories about his womanizing youth, especially on the bodybuilding circuit. In one of the innumerable flashbacks, a sexy groupie decorates Arnold's chest with chocolate syrup and then licks it off. Oh, the decadence!
Roland Kickinger, the actor who plays the young, party-hearty Arnold, is more handsome than Arnold was at any age and actually projects real magnetism, unlike Prochnow and his burnt-toast persona. Some of the flashbacks manage to be almost sprightly, but too much of the movie bogs down in meetings -- dramatized strategy sessions with Arnold and his advisers. In one of these, Arnold has lunch with Warren Buffett, richest man in the universe, and they get along like old buddies.
Has anyone e'er had an unkind word to say about Warren Buffett? Certainly not me. He is one of the largest shareholders in The Washington Post Co. Hi, Warren! Yoo-hoo, it's me, Tom! Still slaving away on my TV previews! Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Oh. Where were we? "See Arnold Run." Some day someone might make a smart, savvy satirical movie about the phenomenon that is Arnold and his plucky insistence on overachievement, but this is not that film. And it's not lousy enough to be fun, either.
Jurgen Prochnow is Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mariel Hemingway is Maria Shriver in A&E's puny version of the bodybuilder-turned-governor's life.
