| Dick | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Andrew Fleming |
| Produced by | Gale Ann Hurd |
| Written by | Andrew Fleming Sheryl Longin |
| Starring | Kirsten Dunst Michelle Williams Dan Hedaya |
| Music by | John Debney |
| Cinematography | Alexander Gruszynski |
| Editing by | Mia Goldman |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 4, 1999 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | France Canada United States |
| Language | English |
Dick is a 1999 American comedy film directed by Andrew Fleming from a script he wrote with Sheryl Longin. It is a parody retelling the events of the Watergate scandal which ended the presidency of Richard ("Tricky Dick") Nixon and features several cast members from Saturday Night Live.
Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams star as Betsy and Arlene, two warm-hearted but not very bright 15-year-old girls and inseparable best friends who, through various twists and turns, become the legendary 'Deep Throat' figure partly responsible for bringing down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Dan Hedaya plays Nixon. His associates H. R. Haldeman, G. Gordon Liddy, John Dean, Henry Kissinger and secretary Rose Mary Woods are respectively played by Dave Foley, Harry Shearer, Jim Breuer, Saul Rubinek and Ana Gasteyer. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are played by Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch. Teri Garr appears as Arlene's mother.
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Betsy Jobs (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene Lorenzo (Michelle Williams) are two sweet-natured but somewhat ditzy teenage girls living in Washington D.C. in the early 1970s. Betsy comes from a wealthy family in the Georgetown area, while Arlene lives with her widowed mother in an apartment in the Watergate building. One night, on a quest to mail a letter to enter a contest to win a date with teen idol singer Bobby Sherman, the two girls sneak out of Arlene's home, at the same time as the Watergate break-in. They manage to enter and leave through the parking garage by taping the latch of a door, accidentally causing the break-in to be discovered. They are seen by G. Gordon Liddy (Harry Shearer), who they believe to be committing a jewel robbery; they panic and run away. The security guard, startled by the taped door, calls the police, who immediately arrest the burglars.
The next day, while at the White House on a school tour, they accidentally happen across Liddy again. They don't recognize him, but he recognizes them and instantly becomes suspicious. He points them out to H. R. Haldeman, who proceeds to interrogate them; their conversation (in which it is revealed that the girls don't actually think about the President that much) is interrupted firstly by a phone call from Haldeman's wife, and secondly by President Nixon himself (Dan Hedaya), who takes Haldeman aside to complain about the bugging operation being so fouled up.
The girls are naturally awestruck at being in the same room as Nixon — but more awestruck at being able to play with his dog, which gives Nixon an idea. In order to keep their silence, he appoints them his official dog-walkers... which means they must be admitted repeatedly to the White House. On these visits they accidentally influence major events such as the Vietnam peace process and the Nixon-Brezhnev accord, by bringing along cookies that they have inadvertently baked marijuana into. (Near the end of the film, when Betsy's brother, Larry (Devon Gummersall), reveals the cookies' "secret ingredient" and realizes the President ate them, he concludes that this was likely a leading cause of Nixon's paranoia.) They also become familiar with the key figures of Nixon's administration, including the long-suffering, frequently ignored Henry Kissinger, and inadvertently learn the major secrets of the Watergate scandal without realizing what they know.
Arlene, previously infatuated with Bobby Sherman, now falls equally hard for the president. Just after reading an 18½-minute message of love into his tape recorder, she plays back another part of the tape and, after hearing his coarse, brutal rantings, quickly realizes his true nature. When they confront Nixon ("You kicked Checkers, you're prejudiced, and you have a potty mouth!"), he fires and threatens them ("You don't mess with the big boys!").
The girls now reevaluate what they have learned and decide to reveal everything to the "radical muckraking bastards" (Nixon's words) at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch). So they become informants; two 15-year-old girls are the true identity of the famous Deep Throat (Betsy's brother had just been caught watching the film of the same name). Woodward and Bernstein — portrayed as petty, childish, and incompetent — are naturally skeptical of the two girls. To make matters worse, their only piece of physical evidence, a list of names of those involved from the Committee to Re-Elect the President, is eaten by Betsy's dog.
Nixon's men realize that the girls are a real threat and attempt tactics such as bugging and undercover agents to find out what they know, eventually going so far as to break into Betsy's house and plant an undercover agent as Arlene's mother's boyfriend. Eventually pushed to the limit after being chased by the Watergate "plumbers", the girls decide to take action: sneaking into Haldeman's house, they manage to find and steal a crucial tape recording. They give a transcription of it to Woodward and Bernstein (keeping the tape as a "souvenir") thus ending Nixon's political career. After the resignation, as Nixon's helicopter flies over Betsy's house, the two girl hold up a sign depicting the phrase "You suck, Dick", further angering the now ex-president.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, but the most negative were from actual movie-goers. Rotten Tomatoes lists the film with a 70% viewer approval rating.
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