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movie review - Dick

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2002.08.20

I saw this on TV, but I thought I'd comment anyway because I liked it.

"Dick" is a comedy about the fall of the Nixon administration. It features two 15-year-old girls, one of whom lives with her single mother in the Watergate. When the girls sneak out of the hotel to deliver some fan mail to a singer, they leave a door jam taped-over so they can sneak in. While making their re-entry, the door slams, and the hotel's guards call the cops.

It is this kind of sequence that occurs time and again throughout the movie. The girls are responsible for the detente with the Russians. The girls' influence is a factor in the US withdrawal from Vietname. A prank by the girls leads to Woodward and Bernstein getting their biggest tips.

Portrayals of the actual administration staff are quite well done, especially with Harry Shearer as G. Gordon Liddy and Saul Rubinek as Henry Kissinger.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner