DICK on DVD
May 12th 2010 04:48
Columbia TriStar Home Video
PHOENIX PICTURES presents
A PACIFIC WESTERN production
A FILM BY ANDREW FLEMING
DICK
Kirsten Dunst
Michelle Williams
Dave Foley
Harry Shearer
Dan Hedaya as Dick
Why is Dick so funny? The buck rests with openly gay writer director Andrew Fleming it's much more fun than Threesome (1994) another of his films on video. I think it's his camp sensibility that lifts Dick up and holds it firmly in cheek. It is not the glorious comedy of stupidity like The Brady Bunch Movie, it isn't a satire, Dick remains truthful and as close to reality as possible, so the circumstances and characters are easy to accept. Seriously funny stuff. I'll call it queer rather than camp because it has the sort of edge The Brady Bunch Movie much as I love it, never even attempted.
The cast work very well as an ensemble and there are brilliantly colorful moments as well as brief encounters with deeply felt and expressed feelings. It would be a fabulous video to watch with Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and so cool to sit home and see with a group at a slumber party. It could even be useful to watch if you want to flunk a Modern American History class. I take my cap off to the whole team who have brought it to life.
I imagine if Marcia and Jan Brady were available they would have been cast in this queerly delightful film, I'm sure they had a part to play in the conception of it.
It's an excellent family film, full of extremely enjoyable moments that made films like Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and Cluless, so much fun. Using the same sort of conceit as Forrest Gump does, Dick gets deeper than Romy & Michele or Cluless, by placing the two blonde girls slap bang into the whole Watergate scandal, but only as a plot point to drive the story.
Rather than originating every major development in American culture (Run Forrest, run!) these two blondes simply assist in exposing one big fat silly Dick, Richard Nixon that is.
Kirsten Dunst as Betsy and Michelle Williams as Arlene are no less than brilliant as they scream, giggle, scream, secret-whistle, scream, stupefy and scream their way down the corridors of the Whitehouse in 1970's Washington D.C. Not since her steely characterisation as the child vampire in Interview with the Vampire have I seen Dunst hit the nail so heavily on the head acting wise. Michelle Williams (a regular cast member of Dawson's Creek at the time, pre-Heath and Matilda) is every part equal as the ever so slightly older, but none the wiser fatherless friend.
Together they seem like Marcia and Jan one moment, or fashionwise, a young Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone the next. All derivatives aside, these actors create likeable characters you will remember.
Dan Hedaya is Nixonesque enough to make Anthony Hopkins seem pale in the Oliver Stone feature not that you could otherwise compare the two. His hatred for the presidential pooch Checkers is a great running gag to watch and his mood swings seem truthful to a tee.
Costume Designer Deborah Everton dresses the two girls in fine 1970's fashion. I'm almost sure I've seen Jan and Marcia in those pyjamas.
I'm proud to say I even wore clothes like the studly young dude Betsy tries to seduce as the girls steal one of the tapes Nixon lost when I was his age. I couldn't say anything bad about this film, if you saw it on the screen, take it home on video and see it again because it's as sophisticated as classic queer comedy comes. If you wondered what I mean by queerly funny, substitute the word camp, but remember we have two teenage girls involved with the President, his dog, journalists from the Washington Post; I think it's fair to say this is better than camp.
Ten out of ten for biggest best value Dick!
PHOENIX PICTURES presents
A PACIFIC WESTERN production
A FILM BY ANDREW FLEMING
DICK
Kirsten Dunst
Michelle Williams
Dave Foley
Harry Shearer
Dan Hedaya as Dick
The cast work very well as an ensemble and there are brilliantly colorful moments as well as brief encounters with deeply felt and expressed feelings. It would be a fabulous video to watch with Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and so cool to sit home and see with a group at a slumber party. It could even be useful to watch if you want to flunk a Modern American History class. I take my cap off to the whole team who have brought it to life.
I imagine if Marcia and Jan Brady were available they would have been cast in this queerly delightful film, I'm sure they had a part to play in the conception of it.
It's an excellent family film, full of extremely enjoyable moments that made films like Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and Cluless, so much fun. Using the same sort of conceit as Forrest Gump does, Dick gets deeper than Romy & Michele or Cluless, by placing the two blonde girls slap bang into the whole Watergate scandal, but only as a plot point to drive the story.
Rather than originating every major development in American culture (Run Forrest, run!) these two blondes simply assist in exposing one big fat silly Dick, Richard Nixon that is.
Kirsten Dunst as Betsy and Michelle Williams as Arlene are no less than brilliant as they scream, giggle, scream, secret-whistle, scream, stupefy and scream their way down the corridors of the Whitehouse in 1970's Washington D.C. Not since her steely characterisation as the child vampire in Interview with the Vampire have I seen Dunst hit the nail so heavily on the head acting wise. Michelle Williams (a regular cast member of Dawson's Creek at the time, pre-Heath and Matilda) is every part equal as the ever so slightly older, but none the wiser fatherless friend.
Together they seem like Marcia and Jan one moment, or fashionwise, a young Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone the next. All derivatives aside, these actors create likeable characters you will remember.
Dan Hedaya is Nixonesque enough to make Anthony Hopkins seem pale in the Oliver Stone feature not that you could otherwise compare the two. His hatred for the presidential pooch Checkers is a great running gag to watch and his mood swings seem truthful to a tee.
Costume Designer Deborah Everton dresses the two girls in fine 1970's fashion. I'm almost sure I've seen Jan and Marcia in those pyjamas.
I'm proud to say I even wore clothes like the studly young dude Betsy tries to seduce as the girls steal one of the tapes Nixon lost when I was his age. I couldn't say anything bad about this film, if you saw it on the screen, take it home on video and see it again because it's as sophisticated as classic queer comedy comes. If you wondered what I mean by queerly funny, substitute the word camp, but remember we have two teenage girls involved with the President, his dog, journalists from the Washington Post; I think it's fair to say this is better than camp.
Ten out of ten for biggest best value Dick!
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