John Adams could not be elected president in today's USA, especially as he is portrayed by Paul Giamatti.

The historic Adams was portly, pessimistic and consumed with wounded pride and stunted ambition. Adams as recreated by Giamatti in the mini-series now underway on HBO is all of those things and more. Or should I say less? Having read David McCullough's biography, John Adams, from which the script for the seven-part series was distilled, as well as other accounts of the period, it seems to me that Giamatti fails to project much of the powerful intelligence of our second president. Even more crucially for the story, his constant state of petulance and uninterrupted look of discomfort -- as if suffering from bad acid reflux -- undercuts the central relationship of the story, Adams' partnership with his wife Abigail. Friends who read the book were charmed by the love story of John and Abigail. In the film version, Abigail, played by Laura Linney, is the most engaging character in the cast. Giamatti is so much the opposite that it makes it hard to understand why Abigail did not lock the bedroom door and make the morose whiner sleep outside with the pigs.

Robert Bianco's review in USA Today concurs with my opinion:

People have long debated Adams' personality and motives, but it seems to be agreed that he was a man of enormous drive and intellect, with an ego and prickly temper to match. Yet Giamatti is more hang-dog than bantam rooster. His enemies may have seen him as an autocrat, but no one ever accused Adams of being inconsequential or, worse, dimwitted, and that's how he often seems here.

Giamatti played another morose whiner in the movie Sideways. In that film, he was a tedious wine snob with an annoying inability to have fun. Giamatti has transported the wine snob back in time and turned him into a founding father. As a result, I find myself feeling little sympathy for his version of John Adams. I'm in full sympathy with Tom Wilkinson's Benjamin Franklin who is barely able to contain his annoyance with Adams' pettiness and insecurity. Far more appealing is Stephen Dillane's Thomas Jefferson. He's charming, a little shy, a bit devious, overly idealistic but complex and compelling -- the kind of guy who might end up on Mount Rushmore.

Being a complete history nerd and movie fan, I am sticking with the series to the end because there is so much that is truly fabulous about the production. Writing in Variety, Brian Lowry got it right when he said:

Technically, the term "sumptuous" almost doesn't do justice to the production, including loving cinematography by Tak Fujimoto capturing the pre-electric environs and majestic recreations (through visual effects and massive sets) of such historical venues as the French palace at Versailles in all its splendid glory. Shot in the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area and Hungary for the European locations, the project features 125 speaking roles and revels in small details, including the barbarism of 18th century vaccinations and the spectacle of a Boston crowd brutally tarring and feathering an English bureaucrat...

"John Adams" has the fortitude to signal from the get-go that it, too, has no intention of meeting the rabble halfway but rather must be accepted on its terms, bowing to the project's greatness. There's something refreshing about that ambitious approach in these pandering times, but such is not generally a modern-day formula for success -- either in TV or, for that matter, politics.

It's commendable that HBO is offering such a rich recreation of this country's founding. Too many Americans are ignorant of their own history and this $100 million production offers remedial instruction in an entertaining form. Of course, liberties are taken with the facts, but to a lesser degree than with most historical films. Still, if John Adams was as obnoxious as Giamatti makes him out to be, only in an age without 24-hour news channels, polls, media consultants, spin doctors and an electoral college that (usually) hews closely to the popular vote could the real John Adams have been chosen to succeed the superstar, George Washington.

Or am I wrong? After all, modern Americans did choose gloomy, paranoid Richard Nixon not once but twice.