If they made a film about George & Lara? Bill & Hillary? Jimmy & Rosalyn

Films like this are either hero worship or hit pieces, and in either case of no interest except in a social phenomenon/freak show way. Another excuse to have some fun with a little Internet flamewar and then move on.

(I see the estimated budget listed at $1,500,000, which is nothing on the scale of modern production costs. So I've got to hand it to the nobodies who put this out and got themselves 15 minutes of fame, which they'll now try to parlay into major careers. Politics aside, it's a brutal industry and a brutal world, and it's hard to get noticed. It takes a lot of luck and/or skill. Not everyone can be another Ed Wood.)

You are a bit cynical ...

While Southside with You is clearly sympathetic toward the Obamas, it does not really engage in "hero worship" (the film suggests that the future president may have been a chain smoker), and it obviously is not a "hit piece." Nor does it seem to have any interest in stoking Internet flaming—while that development may be a consequence, the filmmakers certainly did not operate in that mode and actually made an earnest, essentially apolitical, and rather old-fashioned romance movie.

To the original poster's question, what makes the Obamas different is that they constitute the first presidential couple to really represent modern America, where many people come from mixed-race parentage and 'date' or engage in romantic relationships across ethnic and racial lines. At one point in this film, the young Michelle teasingly yet genuinely asks the young Barack, "Who do you prefer?" in terms of white women or black women. I doubt that any other future First Lady ever asked the future president that question. Then there is the theme, also presented by the film, of how one deals with being an outsider—by virtue of being black (or half-black)—and constantly having a sort of double identity (a concept presented, quite successfully, three years ago in The Butler). This question was naturally more intense for the Obamas than it probably proved for any other future presidential couple, and as a film about a romantic couple rather than an individual, differences in approach arise.

So, yeah, there are some points of interest that one probably would not receive from the retelling of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower's first date.

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