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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
Who would have thought that two naive teenage girls could make
the misadventures Richard Milhous Nixon into a political satire? But
that's just what happens when Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, two
bubble-brained 15 year-olds, unknowingly cross paths with the
Watergate burglars, watching G. Gordon Liddy's plumbers squad during
their infamous break-in at Democratic National Headquarters. When
Liddy (Harry Shearer) spots the duo the next day on a White House
tour, as they accidentally stumble into a paper-shredding project,
Tricky Dick (Dan Hedaya) steps in, appointing them as Official Dog
Walkers and Youth Advisors. They wind up in the Oval Office, where
they discover a tape recorder momentarily left unguarded by
Presidential secretary Rose Mary Woods (Ana Gasteyer). What does one
of our blithe heroines do with it? What any infatuated teeny-bopper
would do: record herself singing an Olivia Newton-John ballad to the
Commander-in-Chief. The kind-hearted girls argue foreign policy with
Henry Kissinger (Saul Rubinek) and persuade the President to end the
Vietnam War by feeding him spiked cookies. Then, of course, they tip
off egomaniacal "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward (Will
Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch), divulging the CREEP
list which they find stuck to Liddy's shoe. Director Andrew Fleming,
who co-wrote the script with Sherlyn Longin, cleverly mixes fact and
fiction, evoking the giddy blonde bimbo movie tradition, setting it
amidst a Presidential scandal, and punctuating it with '70s pop
music. While it may resemble several "Saturday Night Live" skits
edited together, nevertheless, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10,
"Dick" is a sly, sweet, screwball 7. It's corny but comical romp
through revisionist history.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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