Stephanie Zacharek's review of Dick on Salon.com is really a very provocative piece of work. I encourage you to check it out; I have provided the address at the end of this review. Her view of Richard Nixon is that he was a petty, slimeball little turd and following his death and Oliver Stone's film, we have mistakenly developed some sort of pity for the little imp. "It's all well and good to cheer for the underdog, but there are times when it's simply better to kick him." Now, I do not hate Richard Nixon. I don't think that I have any opinion on him, I never knew him. I was born in late 1981. I did, however, adore Oliver Stone's Nixon. His film wasn't completely about Watergate, of course, but the Oliver Stone sensationalistic hyper-edited style makes the picture feel like a three-hour-plus meltdown. His Richard Nixon is grandiose, tragic, pathetic and sad. The film makes him into something very human. We don't particularly admire or love him, but he's a sympathetic character. Which is why, when the walls are closing in and Nixon is struggling to breathe, the film has such a powerful impact. I am more than willing to concede that Oliver Stone's film is not an accurate portrayal of Richard Nixon, both man and presidency, and I should get my ass down to the library and check out the truth. Or, in addition to that, get my ass down to the Associated Press Television News archives and study everything that was shot of Nixon. Or probably even go to C-Span.org and listen to some of the excerpts from the Nixon tapes that weren't available to the public until fairly recently (well, some were released in 1980 and 1991, in fragmented form), but nonetheless are more likely to represent the real Nixon.

I did poke around a little and found this:

NIXON: They have a lot of material. I want--the way I want that handled Bob is get it over. I want Brooking. Just break in. Break in and take it out. You understand.

HALDEMAN: "Yeah. But you have to get somebody to do it."

NIXON: Well, you--that’s what I’m just telling you. Now don’t discuss it here. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them out.

HALDEMAN: I don’t have any problem with breaking in.

NIXON: Just go in and take them. Go in around 8 or 9 o’clock. That’s right. You go in and inspect and clean it out.

I've been told in the briefs that this is in regards to the Brookings Institution, regarding Pentagon Papers revealing U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War. And the Brookings Institution was never broken into. And this particular release is in little fragments that are out of context. But, yeah, this doesn't make Nixon look like, as they say in Dick, a nice person.

I don't know what it is that I would need to do in order to have a valid opinion towards Nixon, and not knowing what I need to be doing is giving me a headache. I think that it may very well be something that I needn't sweat too much about. The only responsibility that I have to a movie is to react to it; that could mean vouching for its artistic validity, but it's not limited to it. I don't know if Nixon is great art, but it is great cinema. Zacharek suggests that Dick is closer to the real Nixon; not factually, the film is of course a goofball comedy, but artistically. (Without going off on a tangent, I have to mention that Dick IS a work of art in a sense, but that does not mean that it is a good film or even that I am making any sort of value judgment towards it. Art is simply a method of communication used to illustrate some sort of values or beliefs. If Martian anthropologists came to Earth twenty million years from now and encountered this film, this is the way that I think they would regard it. Those are the terms that I am using and thinking in.) Anyway, I can intellectually understand how she can regard Dick as the film that Nixon deserves. But I really did not like it as much as Nixon. Somewhat surprisingly, it's not half as ambitious. Rather unsurprisingly, it's not half as fascinating. Compared to Nixon, I found it a little cruel even, although I will again concede that I'm not sure I have a leg to stand on.

The story involves two self-described "dumb teenage girls" who stumble upon the Watergate break-in. They end up being almost single-handedly responsible for ending the war in Vietnam, providing a source-in-the-know for Woodward and Bernstein, and putting an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the Nixon tapes. They really love Nixon at first, but they stumble upon his tapes and discover that he kicks his dog and is anti-Semitic. They then get even with him by, well, helping to bring about his resignation. At the end of the film they make outfits out of an American flag, and stand outside to greet Nixon as he flies away in resignation. They hold up a sign that says, "You suck, Dick!- Love Deep Throat.” Nixon gives them the finger. This sequence is scored by Carly Simon's "You're So Vain.” Zacharek points out the lines: "But you gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me," and suggests that this may mean that Nixon once loved us but threw us away without a second thought. She calls Watergate "a betrayal" and the Carly Simon tune suggests that we loved Nixon, but were indeed irredeemably betrayed by Watergate. "You had me several years ago when I was still quite naïve," she sings. I remember reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Gonzo Papers" collection where he quotes someone comparing the Watergate scandal to discovering that his wife is cheating on him. When Richard Nixon was elected President he had one of the largest majority votes of any of the presidents. But I'm nonetheless skeptical. Do people really love their president that much? I certainly didn't feel betrayed when Clinton was impeached. Did people really love Nixon that much? Was the Watergate scandal really the start of Americans' cynicism with politics? (I can imagine a hypothetical reader becoming red with laughter at that question). I keep thinking to Oliver Stone's insecure and self-hating Nixon, and thinking that he may very well have had reason for being insecure and self-hating. One should simply not go into the Presidency seeking approval and adoration.

Because they wear the American flag at the end of the film, the film is clearly implying that they are symbolic of the American public. One of the girls, Arlene, even has a crush on Nixon. The film is then formatted as a sort of revenge comedy. Its pleasures are in the payoff of that ending. The monster is finally getting his comeuppance. The film seems to like the girls, I think. There are a lot of jokes playing on their stupidity and naivety. They say at the end of the movie that nothing like this will ever happen again, and this is the dawn of a new era. I have read comments describing this line as a joke, but it sounds sincere in the film. Like director/co-writer Andrew Fleming wants to segue into a happy ending. It's possible that he want to have it both ways. As a revenge comedy, I guess it's sort of fun, but it really leaves you wanting. It's never able to go beyond level one, giving a hated American icon what's coming to him. Since they have difficulty defining what they want to say about the girls, I'm not sure that they are able to even do that.

I have heard the film described as a "satire,” but satire is hard to successfully pull off. If Fleming really wanted to do this right, he should have made some sort of statement through the girls. If they represent America, is he making fun of America for ever loving Nixon? When they force him to resign, they do not grow in character or intelligence, and so the destruction of Nixon seems rather meaningless. If he wanted to make them into real heroes, he should not have tried so hard to have us laugh at them. I was never really sold by the gags about the girls' stupidity. Even the second scene of the movie, where Kirsten Dunst henpecks the keys struggling to write a letter to a teen idol, an homage to All the President's Men, struck me as unconvincing. I love the film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, but that was more consistently a celebration of idiocy for one. "Party on, dudes!" says Abraham Lincoln. The characters' stupidity never threatened its thematic integrity as it does in Dick. That, and I think Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves are simply much better at playing stupid. I'm reluctant to attack the film for giving us too much of the girls and too little of Nixon.

The Dan Hedaya performance is the most praised thing in the movie, and for much of the film's run we don't see much of it. The plot is about the story of Watergate breaking and not as much about what happens with Nixon. (All the President's Men has almost absolutely nothing to do with Nixon. He's one of the most important names talked about in the movie, but it doesn't have very much to do with him.) Nixon is easily the most interesting thing in Dick, and since the film isn't interested in satirizing the two girls, there is a temptation to argue that it should work more in satirizing Nixon. But I wonder if that is one of the reasons that Zacharek admires the film. It de-emphasizes Nixon and puts him into a stupid, disposable comedy. That may very well be the ultimate insult towards him, and essential for an effective anti-Nixon entertainment. A film talking at length about why we should hate Nixon would be by definition a waste of film.

Dick seems geared towards the teen and pre-teen audience for films like Clueless and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. The film's references towards All the President's Men and Watergate seem awfully broad, and perhaps even fairly irrelevant to enjoying the film. Dick seems to regard the ‘70s in the same manner that a teen who never lived in the ‘70s would regard it. The film is stylistically kitschy and unspecific. The film's soundtrack includes "Hooked on a Feeling,” "Lady Marmalade,” "ABC,” "Crocodile Rock" and "Dancing Queen" at the end. The Arlene character sings Olivia Newton-John's "I Honestly Love You" into Nixon's tape recorder. There is roller skating in the film. The costumes and hairstyles are something that you would expect to see in a comedy set in the ‘70s. I'm reminded of the kid in the Freddy Krueger mask in The Wedding Singer. Not because the kid had anything of importance or interest to say, but simply because he was there in an attempt to illustrate everything that the filmmakers thought was great in the era. Dick has that same forced kitschiness. I don't think that any of this is particularly funny, and the film doesn't seem to be making any satirical points towards the ‘70s or towards Nixon through any of this. It is not making any comment towards "dumb teen" comedies either. The film's approach is simply shallow. Hey, I know that I didn't live in the ‘70s, but couldn't they have used Nixon and the film's heroes and find a way to actually comment on the banality of disco music and the polyester age? Just because Dick is a comedy doesn't mean that it cannot be substantive.

One of the film's better jokes involves the girls inavertedly baking marijuana into a batch of cookies to give to their friend the President. The cookies are such a big hit that the President asks them to bring them over every time they visit. According to an online publication called Alternet Richard Nixon was adamant about maintaining the legal status of marijuana. He had a presidential committee of "drug warriors" to research the effects of the drug. They came to him and said that they had actually changed their previous stance and wanted to have it legalized. Nixon angrily refused to do any such thing and actually called for an all-out war on the drug. Nixon allegedly made wacko statements about the drug, stating that it was as dangerous a threat to a strong society as homosexuality, which is why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. He also thought that the Jews were behind the movement for legalization. Alternet states that the drug war was started by Nixon for stupid reasons, and for that reason we should give it up. The article reminds me of meetings I had at "Students for the Second Amendment" about the causes of current gun control legislation. One story in particular manages to tie it back with a communist conspiracy like Nixon was talking about. I'm for gun ownership and the legalization of marijuana, but I'm prepared to concede that the opponents of these positions are being motivated by something relatively substantial and complex and their opinions are valid interpretations of the issues at hand. It seems too easy to justify our cause by showing that the origin of the other side is a universally hated icon (don't you know Hitler practiced gun control?!)

Anyway, I still think that their story makes sense. The scene with the cookies is funny because Nixon was a complete tight-ass and he inadvertedly got stoned on an innocent batch of cookies. The ironic humor is heightened when we imagine Nixon being terrified by marijuana and would have kittens if he knew what he was consuming. We would have had a much different film on our hands had the film been about how the girls help Nixon loosen up as the film's first act indicates it will be. I am certainly not sure if it would be better. However, it keeps on coming back the problem that the film sort of kind of wants us to laugh at the girls, keeping them from representing any sort of values. The girls tell the President that he should get out of Vietnam and they teach him the peace sign, but they seem to be aping the counterculture more than they are representing it. I guess that that might be the joke.

Satirical points aside, much of this movie is plainly not very funny. Will Ferrell, as Bob Woodward, is plainly unwatchable. I'm not sure words can describe how much I loathe this man. His repartee with the Carl Bernstein character has been described as a "doofus duo,” but the Ferrell performance seems to suggest that they are lovers. In the beginning of the film he gets in a slapping fight with Bernstein, and whines in a lisp consistent with his cheerleader character from Saturday Night Live, "You smell like cabbage." It's crude, idiotic, junior-high-type humor. The sexual innuendoes with the title, which I have been careful to avoid in my review, are funnier but not any less idiotic. One of the film's worse ideas is its very last image during the end credits, of the two girls licking, in slow motion, lollipops with the word "Dick" written on them, their eyes rolling back in their head unable to contain their mock ecstasy. Kirsten Dunst refuses to do a nude scene for Crazy/Beautiful, but she'll fellate a lolly for this movie? This is not one of the great Dunst performances. It goes in the bargain bin with Jumanji and Small Soldiers (which was still a very good, but still). She isn't really given anything to do, and that is in itself sort of sinful. There is a plot thread where Arlene's mother is seduced by Ted McGinley, who the girls think may be a spy for the president. This is a funny idea, but Fleming doesn't bother to exploit it or even really explore it. This failure to do anything with McGinley seems to be symptomatic of the film's underlying laziness and thoughtlessness.

I became interested in Dick when I saw the trailer. I admit I found it to be very very funny; I was sort of stunned that it actually got made. I wanted to see it, but never got around to until now. Somehow, I don't find myself nearly as impressed with that premise any more. It's a one-joke movie, and it's a very good joke based on the trailer. But the thing is, I don't think that it had to be limited to just the one.