Publication Date: 12-15-2025

LBJ (2017) review

Dir. Rob Reiner

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Remembering Rob Reiner

1947 – 2025

I predict that it’s going to be movies like Rob Reiner’s LBJ that will make theatrically released biopics a thing of the past. For every Lincoln we get, and how masterfully done that film and its scope was, we get a barrage of middling efforts like LBJ that do little to elevate its subject beyond the status of an indifferently portrayed, conflicting caricature.

Think back over the last couple years and consider the biopics we’ve gotten, specifically the ones that underperformed or generated average reviews: The Founder (Ray Kroc), Snowden (Edward Snowden), Jackie (Jackie Kennedy), Anthropoid (General Reinhard Heydrich), Hands of Stone (Roberto Durán), The Birth of a Nation (Nat Turner), Birth of the Dragon (Bruce Lee), Race (Jesse Owens), All Eyez on Me (Tupac Shakur), and the list goes on. Some of these are, in my opinion, fairly decent films, but a great many are average or below-average works that resulted in costly bombs and failed to make an impression on audiences. Keep in mind that most of these subjects’ stories could be turned into more-than-competent, HBO miniseries for less money with potential to cater to a wider demographic that doesn’t need to put pants on nor leave the house to see them.

For every Hacksaw Ridge we get, there’s a Birth of the Dragon waiting around the corner, in a quality sense, and the $36 million LBJ is a film closer to the latter, destined for sleepy Sunday afternoon syndication on network television and a host of its sister stations.

Pleasantly avoiding an attempt at a comprehensive look at the 36th President of the United States, who assumed office after the horrific assassination of John F. Kennedy, whom Johnson served under as Vice President, LBJ is a tad more concentrated than some of the aforementioned works. It specifically focuses on the failed campaign of Johnson, the subsequent Kennedy presidency, and the mutual differences the two had about when to take action on a bill that would work to unite blacks and whites and put an end to racist Jim Crow policies. Woody Harrelson takes on the role of Lyndon B. Johnson, encased in enough makeup to rival both Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Kevin Spacey in the upcoming All the Money in the World (two more biopics, go figure), the outspoken, unabashedly southern heir to the throne, who proudly proclaims he can speak both languages the American people presently understand – Kennedy and the south. The bulk of the second and third act of the film revolve around Johnson after taking the Oath of Office hours after Kennedy was killed.

LBJ is clumsily edited as the first-half of the film intersects moments leading up to the JFK assassination in Dallas until the timelines of past and future link up to form the present. It’s bizarrely conceived given it doesn’t add anything aside from narrative confusion for the first twenty minutes. In the meantime, we watch Harrelson give a moderately interesting iteration of LBJ, a man careful to pass Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act in the wake of his death due to known opposition from Georgia Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins) despite Democratic Party pressure and escalating tensions from Kennedy’s surviving brother Bobby (Michael Stahl-David).

Every potentially interesting idea or theme Reiner and writer Joey Hartstone propose in the film is quickly abandoned following the scene’s conclusion. There’s a complexity of LBJ’s character that, at times, suggests he is a man harboring racist convictions like much of southern America, especially in the company of Senator Russell, that gets abandoned from focus rather quickly. Hartstone’s treatment of LBJ resorts to lame shock value, such as the former president’s fondness for defecating with the door open in the presence of lawmakers or lobbyists he wasn’t fond of as well as throwing around the notion that “when you think life has given you lemons, they’re actually big titties.” In Trump’s America, and even a year after the 2016 election, these comments should hardly make anyone bat an eye, as unfortunate of a statement as that may be.

It’s strange for a film about this high-profile of a person not to have any meaningful opinion on him, but LBJ almost actively refuses to make any statement regarding the former president. LBJ is probably behind Franklin D. Roosevelt in the rankings of a president who created the most effective social programs, establishing Medicare and Medicaid, and, as stated, struck a chord of honesty that resonated with working and upper class Americans. Having said that, LBJ has also been criticized for not aiding black families with any kind of long-term sustainability on top of thrusting America into the Vietnam War in a very hard-headed manner that almost forced him to decline running for reelection (something the film notes on top of four or five other things in a four-title-cards worth of exposition before the closing credits).

There’s not much to LBJ that would work to excite a history-buff nor is there enough to warrant much else besides a curiosity viewing in terms of seeing how competent Harrelson is as Johnson. Any deep-seeded mediocrity the film harbors is slightly offset by that coupled with the fact that it’s often difficult to blast something that’s average for just being average; portraying events or characters as inconsequential is more offensive and at least Reiner and Hartstone stop themselves before they go that far.

NOTE: I discuss LBJ and the FIVE reasons I believe the theatrical biopic is dying on my radio show Sleepless with Steve on WONC 89.1FM:

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Michael Stahl-David, Richard Jenkins, Jeffrey Donovan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Pullman, and C. Thomas Howell. Directed by: Rob Reiner.