Guarding an irascible and irrepressible old woman in the “wilds” of Summersville, Ohio, is boring business for seven Secret Service agents, even if she is the former First Lady and widow of a President. It’s an assignment that the SAIC (Special Agent in Charge) Douglas Chesnic (Nicolas Cage) is sick and tired of and he wants out. He wants to be where the action is — not buried in the boonies jumping at the beck and call of Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine).
Her only amusements in life seem to be the remnants of her fading glory — videos and splashy magazine covers — and keeping seven grown men at the end of her tether. She loved the power of the White House and she is loathe to relinquish it. But Doug Chesnic wants to do his job by the book, even on such a “cupcake” assignment. But rules and regulations are made to be broken by those who are used to getting their way. So there is a major power struggle between her and her special agent.
However, she has a lot of her own rules and they are ironclad. The agents have to check their guns at her bedroom door. She hates guns and is always calling her agents “gunmen”. No smoking in the house. No one is to read the newspaper before it is brought to her. One of them, usually Douglas, must bring her breakfast upstairs on a tray with a single rose in a bud vase.
For five years the Secret Service detail has had it fairly easy except for her demands. Now, all of a sudden, she wants to get out, be active, live life. She wants to go to the opera. She wants to go golfing with outdoor temperatures at 38 degrees. She wants to go on a picnic in the snow — because she says . . . who can wait for summer. She gives her agents the slip — not once, but twice — by ordering her chauffeur, Earl, (Austin Pendleton) to gun it while the agents are out of the car. The men then have to go through the embarrassment of asking the local sheriff’s department to help search for her. She has made them a laughing stock.
TheVillageSmith 