So at my wife’s insistence, we went to see it again, this time in Fairfax City at a matinee. At the end of the movie, the elderly couple sitting in front of us was beaming. The wife said, “what a wonderful movie.” The husband said, “if it wasn’t for the sex scenes [which were pretty mild] I’d say every high school student in America should see this movie.” They told us that they listened to Atlas Shrugged on tape many years ago, but were otherwise unfamiliar with Ayn Rand–they had never heard of The Fountainhead, for example.
Reviewing what others have said about the movie, I’m seeing a pattern. Rand fans are disappointed that the movie isn’t better; Rand-haters hate the movie. But people who are generally libertarian-minded but don’t have a strong vision of how the movie “should” be seem to enjoy both the plot (why are all these people disappearing? will Dagny and Hank succeed?) and the characterization of heroic entrepreneurs versus crony capitalists and their political allies.