Dan Hedeya and Saul Rubinek are tremendous character actors (Rubinek also directed the brilliant JERRY AND TOM) whose faces you probably know from somewhere. A keen eye would spot both appeared together amongst the cavalcade of stars in Oliver Stone's NIXON, though were reduced to minor roles. They're elevated to positions of extreme power in DICK (Hedeya the president, Rubinek is Kissinger) and have a ball. Little touches like this contribute so much to this tremendous little film.
Two clueless fifteen year old girls, Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) set off a chain of events that leads to the fall of President Nixon when they innocently break into the Watergate building. From that point forward, the very clever script sends up the answers to every mystery shrouding the investigation.
This means that `the radical muckraking bastards' from the Washington Post are sent up mercilessly by Ferrell and McCulloch (Hoffman and Redford don't escape either).
Of course the marketers have conspired to screw it up. After failing in the States it played for about a week in Australia (there were three other people in the cinema when I saw it on the opening day) under the tagline: `If you enjoyed Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion '. Obviously they didn't want to scare away a teenage audience unconditioned to the significance of Watergate.
However, you don't need to understand the significance of the details - the joy is that the jokes work on all levels, although the more you understand the more you will laugh. Few comedies promise to amuse across the age bracket as DICK.
Two clueless fifteen year old girls, Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) set off a chain of events that leads to the fall of President Nixon when they innocently break into the Watergate building. From that point forward, the very clever script sends up the answers to every mystery shrouding the investigation.
This means that `the radical muckraking bastards' from the Washington Post are sent up mercilessly by Ferrell and McCulloch (Hoffman and Redford don't escape either).
Of course the marketers have conspired to screw it up. After failing in the States it played for about a week in Australia (there were three other people in the cinema when I saw it on the opening day) under the tagline: `If you enjoyed Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion '. Obviously they didn't want to scare away a teenage audience unconditioned to the significance of Watergate.
However, you don't need to understand the significance of the details - the joy is that the jokes work on all levels, although the more you understand the more you will laugh. Few comedies promise to amuse across the age bracket as DICK.