Mike Rowe’s ‘Love Letter’ to Those Who Built America Hits Theaters
By Movieguide® Contributor
Mike Rowe has something to say about his new docudrama, SOMETHING TO STAND FOR.
“Like most of my career, it was a combination of Forrest Gumpery and serendipity,” he told The Stream of what inspired the movie. “I had been working on a podcast called The Way I Heard It, and still am. I started that about eight years ago. Basically, it started as a collection of stories that were written in the style of Paul Harvey.”
“I love the idea of learning something I didn’t know about somebody I did, but getting a chance to figure it out along the way. So it was a short-form podcast with a mix of history and mystery. I called it ‘Stories for the Curious Mind with a Short Attention Span,’ and just started writing about some of my favorite people,” the DIRTY JOBS star explained.
“And that podcast turned into a thing, and I wrote a few hundred stories for it. And then it turned into a book, and then it turned into a TV show. And then some smart guy said, ‘Hey, around an occasion, maybe Christmas or maybe the 4th of July, why don’t you get a couple of relevant stories together, and we’ll do a movie?'”
“I thought it was a terrible idea,” Rowe admitted, “but then I thought about it some more, and then we started to adapt these stories for the big screen.”
It turns out it wasn’t such a terrible idea.
Movieguide® praised SOMETHING TO STAND FOR’s “Very strong moral, patriotic worldview celebrates American values.” Part of the review reads:
SOMETHING TO STAND FOR WITH MIKE ROWE is a lively documentary just in time for July Fourth. TV personality, raconteur and motivational speaker Mike Rowe tells several historical stories celebrating American patriotism. Rowe tells multiple re-enacted patriotic stories. The stories include stories about the Founding Fathers, several America soldiers who took part in various famous battles, two Medal of Honor winners, an American President, and two Supreme Court Justices. He also reveals a story about some advice the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave to a young black female singer that impacted her life.
SOMETHING TO STAND FOR is a stirring, inspiring, superb documentary. Mike Rowe, who produces and wrote the script, infuses his movie with an energetic style. He celebrates liberty, patriotism, duty, honor, and sacrifice. However, it fudges some historical facts. SOMETHING TO STAND FOR also has some re-enacted war violence, a few light obscenities and a humorous, somewhat off-color biographical story about animal husbandry. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger and older children. That said, SOMETHING TO STAND FOR WITH MIKE ROWE is worth seeing on the big screen.
Rowe believes SOMETHING TO STAND FOR is a “love letter of sorts to the people who helped build the country and to the principles that most people today, even people on opposite sides of the aisle, can agree make us who we are: uniquely American.”
“We are still very much a work in progress,” he told Fox News. “The movie doesn’t attempt to wrap itself in the flag and say, ‘Hey, we did it. Go us. We’re perfect.’ [It’s] an unapologetically patriotic movie that gives me, I think, permission to say that in spite of the imperfections of our Founders and in spite of the world we find ourselves in today, we still have a lot to be proud of, we still have a lot to be grateful for — and we still have a lot to celebrate.”
You can see SOMETHING TO STAND FOR in theaters now.
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