Denver Post, 25 April 2005

By Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post TV Critic

Eleanor and Franklin are miniseries regulars. We've seen them impersonated through all manner of World War II movies and biopics.

Their complicated partnership, their romantic extracurriculars and political careers, his presidencies and wartime leadership are well documented. But never has the focus been so narrowly held to the infantile paralysis that struck him at age 39, the hydrotherapy and other treatments, the psychological toll of his disability and how it ultimately deepened and strengthened him.

In "Warm Springs," premiering Saturday at 6 p.m. on HBO, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's battle with polio is depicted as central to shaping his character. Often noted as a defining event in the Roosevelts' lives, here the polio moves to the foreground in the biography, pushing out most of the rest of history.

Shot partly on location, this story makes a larger-than-life figure very human, explaining his personal awakening in a special, remote rehabilitation center in the pre-presidential years.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, goes Nietzsche's old saw. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Those can-do dictums underlie this little film, which is powerful thanks to the distinguished performances.

The charmed life and ascendent political career of this member of the Roosevelt dynasty are sketched as the story opens. Suddenly - perhaps, this film suggests, due to exposure to contaminated water at a Boy Scout camp where he makes the rounds for a photo op - FDR is stricken, paralyzed from the waist down.

He is humbled, then reborn as he seeks a miracle cure in the mineral waters of Georgia, surrounded at the rundown Warm Springs spa by impoverished rural Southerners, outside his aristocratic experience in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Expect Emmy nominations all around.

Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon are transporting as the young couple destined for greatness.

Branagh's accent is perfect, his rendition of FDR's magnetic glad-handing personality feels right; the cigarette holder and pince-nez glasses are convincing, but the camera's glimpses of his shaved legs are even more so: The production reveals FDR's legs as withered and weak in a number of shots, including underwater views that could have used doubles or stand-ins. In other scenes, with and without metal braces, it is hard to believe that the frail-seeming limbs belong to the actor.

As Eleanor, Nixon dashes any memory of her "Sex and the City" self, embodying the awkward, gangly wife with the odd gait and pronounced overbite. (She can't help that she's too pretty for the part.)

Jane Alexander, who has played Eleanor in previous productions, graduates to the more severe role of Franklin's mother. Kathy Bates has a supporting part as the physical therapist and David Paymer is Louis Howe, the political fixer who never gives up on the Roosevelts.

Joseph Sargent ("Something the Lord Made" and "Miss Evers' Boys") directs the film from the first screenplay by Margaret Nagle (previously an actress in "My So-Called Life" and other series).

"Warm Springs" doesn't shy away from sentimentality and all-American uplift. Those of us who weren't alive for FDR's presidency can't help wishing we had witnessed it - or imagining him in charge today.

Beyond its nod to the character-building effect of a physical handicap on a future president, the film makes clear how medieval the public's attitude was toward disability at the time.

Polio was the plague of the day. In some circles it was considered somehow shameful, presumed to represent God's retribution for sin, the way AIDS was regarded by the ignorant in the early years of that epidemic. The Roosevelts were in large measure responsible for enlightening the public about polio, and for funding the first treatment center.

If "Warm Springs" succeeds in drawing a wide audience, it should send a new generation scrambling for Joseph Lash's groundbreaking biography, "Eleanor and Franklin."