The Young Dr Watson sent in this review of WAG THE DOG. He woke up from a fevered dream of psychotic pastries trying to smother him with their own creme and dough, luckily the arrival of his pass for Wag saved him. We had one previous review, which was ecstatic, now this goes a bit the other way. As usual this is just the Young Dr Watson's opinion, yours may be different. So here it goes...
Wag the Dog
Directed b Barry Levinson
David Mamet is one of the great playwrites of the century and it is with great shock and horror that your corespondent has discovered that he and Hilary Henkin have written what appears to be for all intents and purpouses a Marx brothers movie.
What this thing seems to be is a remake of Michael Moore’s “Canadian Bacon.” The President, whom we never actually see has been accused of sexual harassment by a firefly girl(the campfire girls would have sued or something) and presidential advisor Winifred Ames(Anne Heche) calls Groucho (Robert De Niro as Conrad Brean) into the White House basement to save the day. And since he is Groucho, he concocts a truly Marxian plan via the tried and true method of osmosis...a crisis! The evil Albanians have a nuclear bomb and...no one would vote against the President in the middle of a war, right? Of course you deny that we have B-3 bombers! Just because we don’t have them doesn’t mean we don’t have them!
So Groucho and Winnifred fly off to Hollywood to find just the guy to fake a war, and they find Stanley Motss(Dustin Hoffman) movie producer extraordinare! Okay, so he’s more Mel Brooks than Chico, but who cares?
Motss gathers together his team ala Mission:Impossible. Denis Leary as The Fad King, Andrea Martin asLiz Butsky, Willie Nelson(!) as Johnny Green and Kirsten Dunst as secratary Tracy Lime. None of these people seem to know just what it is they are doing, but they seem to do it well as the media appears to be dolts who will report anything they are told, no matter how bogus it appears.
It appears that everything is working until the CIA, who knows that there is nothing going on tries to intervene. William H. Macy is great as the exasperated Agent Young, who is no match for Groucho’s twisted logic. He does pass the word to the opposing candidate (Craig T. Nelson) that peace has returned. It’s part of the logic of the film that Nelson’s character doesn’t deny the reality of the phony war.
As a response to this, there is an even sillier counter-plot. This is the silliest Made-For-Grownups film of the year. Everyone except Anne Heche and William Macy appear to be on drugs.
Barry Levinson should be ashamed of himself.
