Thursday, May 01, 2014

Dick (movie review)


I confess this one cracked me up a lot.  I was LOL-ing about in my living room, appreciating this 1999 take on the Watergate scandal.

Two teenage girls stumble into getting to walk Checkers, the president's dog, but are also witnessing G. Gordon Liddy sneaking around.

Woodword () and Bernstein () learn of their "secret youth adviser" information once the one girl's crush on Tricky "not a crook" Dick is replaced with loathing when he turns out to be a potty mouth (mirroring a demographic's reaction).

They meet in an underground parking lot.

The girls have just learned the title of a porno film their brother gets busted for watching, by the angry nuclear family dad, so tell the journalists they're "Deep Throat".  And thereby hangs a tale.

Oh, and lets not forget the Hello Dollies, cookies unintentially spiked with the brother's stash, that get served around the White House, prompting peace talks with Breshniev to go unexpectedly well.

If you lived through the original events, as I did, as not much older than a teen myself, all this may seem especially hilarious, did to me.  Kissinger, Haldeman, Dean (no Ellsberg yet)... they're all there, chewed up and spit out by the zeitgeist, enshrined in our memories as clowns.