Dick
Director: | Andrew Fleming |
Writers: | Andrew Fleming and Sheryl Longin |
Columbia Pictures; 90 minutes; PG-13 | |
Release: | 8/99 |
Cast: | Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Williams, Jim Breuer |
Maybe it's Monica's fault. After the Lewinsky affair, a film as creatively goofy as Dick seems not only plausible, but apt. The premise is this: an airheady pair of 15-year-old girls become infatuated with President Richard Nixon on a trip to the White House. Betsy and Arlene (Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams) are appointed official dog-walkers, which hastens their discovery of Dick's trickiness. The movie's biggest conceit is that this pair is the confidential informant Deep Throat who catalyzed Nixon's downfall. Dumb puns and period music populate this bizarrely creative TV sketch.
Lodged somewhere between satire and giggly spoof, it comes as no surprise that several cast members come from Saturday Night Live and Kids in the Hall. If the silent majority is, as Nixon believed, the true shaper of history, then how come these loud ditzy girls can influence world events?