`Dick' is a movie that is funnier than its previews would leave you to believe, but not as funny as it could be.
The premise is silly yet appealing. Two 15-year old girls (played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) bungle their way into the White House, talk Richard Nixon into ending the Vietnam War, and then become the mysterious Deep Throat informants who bring down the Nixon administration after the Watergate break-in.
But the girls are not only dumb, they're annoying. And the filmmakers can't decide how to cast the film. Veteran character actor Dan Hedaya turns in a wonderful performance as Nixon--perhaps the most dead-on portrayal of the president we've yet seen (surpassing even Anthony Hopkins' impersonation in Oliver Stone's `Nixon'). The reason is that he plays Nixon relatively straight. We sense Nixon's nastiness, insecurity and vulnerability all at the same time.
The rest of the key roles are played by sketch comedians such as Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch as a forever bickering Woodward and Bernstein, Dave Foley as Bob Haldeman, Jim Breur as John Dean and Harry Shearer as G. Gordon Liddy. Unlike Hedaya, they play their roles for laughs, and as a result we never believe that these are the characters they are portraying, as we do with Hedaya.
There are some inspired scenes, however, such as the explanation for the 18-minute gap in the conversation recorded by Nixon secretary Rosemary Woods and the girls being shadowed by a van with the words `Plumbers' on the side. But these are more than offset by the endless `I love Dick' jokes, and other puns involving the phallic name. One of these goes a long way.
The real issue is what is the audience for this film? Only people over 45 years of age remember Watergate, and most of those have moved well beyond that incident. This movie might have been move successful 20 years ago. It isn't now.
The premise is silly yet appealing. Two 15-year old girls (played by Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) bungle their way into the White House, talk Richard Nixon into ending the Vietnam War, and then become the mysterious Deep Throat informants who bring down the Nixon administration after the Watergate break-in.
But the girls are not only dumb, they're annoying. And the filmmakers can't decide how to cast the film. Veteran character actor Dan Hedaya turns in a wonderful performance as Nixon--perhaps the most dead-on portrayal of the president we've yet seen (surpassing even Anthony Hopkins' impersonation in Oliver Stone's `Nixon'). The reason is that he plays Nixon relatively straight. We sense Nixon's nastiness, insecurity and vulnerability all at the same time.
The rest of the key roles are played by sketch comedians such as Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch as a forever bickering Woodward and Bernstein, Dave Foley as Bob Haldeman, Jim Breur as John Dean and Harry Shearer as G. Gordon Liddy. Unlike Hedaya, they play their roles for laughs, and as a result we never believe that these are the characters they are portraying, as we do with Hedaya.
There are some inspired scenes, however, such as the explanation for the 18-minute gap in the conversation recorded by Nixon secretary Rosemary Woods and the girls being shadowed by a van with the words `Plumbers' on the side. But these are more than offset by the endless `I love Dick' jokes, and other puns involving the phallic name. One of these goes a long way.
The real issue is what is the audience for this film? Only people over 45 years of age remember Watergate, and most of those have moved well beyond that incident. This movie might have been move successful 20 years ago. It isn't now.