The best-selling roman à clef by "Anonymous," a/k/a journalist Joe Klein, on Bill Clinton's drive to the Presidency, is short on imagination: just take the reality and tweak it a little. Clinton becomes "Stanton," George Stephanopoulos becomes black, and so forth. And the further the story ventures from established fact (the candidate's fondness for doughnuts, his gregariousness), or from eternal verity (the triviality of the public reaction to a TV interview), the deeper and faster it gets into potboiling tripe. John Travolta, with grayed hair and hoarsened voice, contents himself with straightforward impersonation, and in his modest aims he is quite appealing. But Emma Thompson's suppression of her native accent proves to be a severe handicap in the Hillary role. The audience, not trusted to its own judgment, is accorded a couple of pairs of eyes to see through -- a boyish black idealist's and an earthy lesbian moralist's -- and in those characters the movie gives in to preachment and piety, and gives up on satire. With Adrian Lester, Kathy Bates, Billy Bob Thornton, and Larry Hagman; directed by Mike Nichols. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd