Dick (1999)

Two naive school girls become friends with Richard Nixon and become his official Youth Advisers and Dog Walkers. They accidentally become involved in the Watergate scandal and discovered to be the source known as Deepthroat. They then become threats to national security and become targets of the secret service, all without their parents finding out and completing a school assignment about turquoise jewellery. With a huge cast of hilarious actors I can guarantee a fun time will be had by all. It's super fun to see an alternate telling of how Dick went down. This movie also has a brilliant soundtrack of hits from the period that help tell the story.

I don't understand how you can go through the time, effort and expense to make a motion picture and forget that a comedy needs jokes. It's like making an action flick where no one gets punched or a musical where no one sings or a tragedy where no one cries. Dick certainly has a humorous tone and some potentially funny premises but when it comes to honest-to-goodness jokes, there are very few here and most of them don't show up until the film is half over.Betsy and Arlene (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) are a couple of 15 year old girls who get caught up in the intrigue of the 1972 Nixon White House. At first, they just walk the President's dog and Arlene develops a school girl crush on Tricky Dick (Dan Hedaya). When they inadvertently discover Nixon's dark side, the girls turn into Deep Throat, the inside source that fed Woodward and Bernstein (Will Farrell and Bruce McCulloch) information on the Watergate cover up.Aside from a weirdly large number of double entendres about Nixon's first name and Ferrell and McCulloch firing off bits of shtick every moment they're on screen like they were signaling for someone to come and rescue them from this desert island of comedy, there's very little to laugh about in Dick. That's not the fault of the cast, though there are a few times when they give performances that could have been acceptable in a docu-drama. These actors are just not given enough to work with. For example, there's a scene where Arlene has a romantic fantasy about Nixon sweeping her off her feet. The idea provokes a snicker but it never goes anywhere or leads to anything. Instead of ending on a big laugh, the dream sequence merely trickles away. Or when Betsy and Arlene realize the truth about Nixon after hearing an audio tape of him ranting and cussing and kicking his dog, the scene ends with Betsy saying "I don't think the President of the United States should be recording conversations like that". The people who made Dick consider THAT to be a big punchline.Dunst and Willams are bright and bubbly but, as promising as this concept seems, it's a big, fat nothing burger of a film. Unless you're a hard core Nixon hater who can never get enough of seeing him mocked, you won't enjoy this Dick.

It is always interesting when someone makes a cross-genre movie, even if it isn't always successful. The two genres here are teen comedy and political satire, not the most obvious of bedfellows. And yet, in this highly improbable tale of two airhead teenage girls who find themselves right at the centre of the Watergate conspiracy, the two genres mesh together perfectly. What's more, the film works well as both a teen comedy and as a political satire.There is a very strong cast, including a number of names in the early days of their careers. Kirsten Dunst was already established, but Michelle Williams, Will Ferrell, and Ryan Reynolds were less well known.As well as being an entertaining take on true events, there are lots of entertaining little touches (the Bernstein character, for instance).I thoroughly enjoyed this unusual and rather daft movie.

By this I mean I have studied the Nixon presidency and Watergate from the outside. I loved 'All the President's Men', 'Washington: Behind Closed Doors' (Jason Robards as "Richard Monckton") and, of course, the Oliver Stone 'Nixon'.I think it is a wonderful fantasy to have some of the most critical events in recent US history revolve around two ditsy teenage girls (all that squealy, jumpy-up-and-down stuff really got on my nerves, I had to tell myself they were acting in character, after all "I have met yams with more going on upstairs than these two"). The girls actually trace the same arc as the American public in the early 70's, from unquestioning belief in Nixon to realising he's a paranoid bigot with a "potty mouth" (and he doesn't even like dogs).In the course of the film our heroines manage to influence global diplomacy and bring about the downfall of their former hero (the adolescent crush on Nixon is excruciatingly funny). We even learn why there is an 18.5 minute gap in the President's tapes.The performances are great fun. Dan Hedaya is sublime as Nixon ("young people trust me" - oh, boy!), all scowling and growling. Saul Rubinek as Kissinger and Harry Shearer as G. Gordon Liddy make great caricatures of the real thing. The 'Woodstein' partnership is excellent, too, a relationship born of an irritated recognition of mutual need. Only Dave Foley's Haldeman seems too bland and unthreatening. I regretted not having a take on Howard Hunt.Having outsiders act as participants or witnesses to history is not a new idea, of course, but in this case I found myself almost wishing this could be true.