Word: daves
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...media coverage...wasn't I interviewed by scores of newspapers around the country and didn't I appear on the Dave Finigan television show? How about all the monthly newsletter that I wrote? There must be a record of my presidency somewhere...
...Dave -- how'd you like to make a full-time job of it? This suits the Machiavellian purposes of chief of staff Bob Alexander (played with joyously evil relish by Frank Langella). As his name suggests, he combines the less attractive traits of Bob Haldeman and Alexander Haig. He's been running Mitchell (whom Kline also plays), and he's not about to abandon power gracefully. Besides, this putz should be a pushover...
...Once Dave has mastered the President's swivel chair (he has a tendency to tip too far back in it), he starts mastering the other instruments of power as well. Budget reform, an improved day-care program, a bold new jobs program, even the banishment of corruption -- all these he achieves by the simple assertion of guileless right thinking. He even manages to woo Mrs. Mitchell (Sigourney Weaver) out of the separate bedroom and angry silence into which her real husband has forced her to retreat...
...balanced with a sharp comic shrewdness. Reitman has succeeded in recruiting all sorts of prominent people -- ranging from sitting Senators to the McLaughlin Group to Oliver Stone, contributing a paranoid slant on good- heartedness -- to satirize their own and, more important, the media's self- importance. They impart to Dave just the topical edge it requires...
...that one wants to take anything away from its professional actors. The Bushiness of Kline's President is well-observed, and the woolliness of his Dave contains bristles too. He's warm without being entirely cuddlesome. Weaver has a veteran wife's weary wariness down perfectly. Ving Rhames as a Secret Service man allowing Dave to melt his professional steeliness, Kevin Dunn as the press secretary for whom "no comment" is a moral statement, and Charles Grodin as a CPA appalled by federal accounting practices complete one of the best comic ensembles in years. Under Reitman's unforced and confident...