Susan Granger’s review of “DICK” (Columbia Pictures)
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.
