Word: wags
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...Wag the Dog is director Barry Levinson's wonderfully biting satire of this prevailing attitude, which links show business to American politics. The people want to be caught up in the swirling momentum of performances, Levinson implies--whether it is a big-budget alien movie or the Presidential speech on television, Americans want to be entertained. The two arenas of politics and Hollywood, no matter how opposed in fundamental purposes, end up reaching their ends by the same means...
Satire is exceedingly difficult to pull of as a genre of film. Wag the Dog compounds this burden with black comedy. The load eventually proves to be too much for the film to carry, but the film has to be admired for its sheer effort. Everyone gets brutally skewered in this one: politicians, filmmakers, actors, reporters and, of course, the credulous masses...
...smartest thing about Wag the Dog is that Levinson never puts a face on the President. We never really know--nor really care--about his status or his quest to be reelected. Instead, whether Brean will actually have his Albanian showdown remains more important...
...Wag the Dog remains vastly entertaining even during its most tenuous moments. De Niro, for the first time in ages, is wonderfully likeable in the antihero role. We should hate, loath, despise Brean for his shameless dishonesty--but we don't. Instead, we welcome his machinations and feel strangely vindicated by the possibility of his pulling off the scheme. Hoffman is the perfect counterpart to De Niro's smug political monster. He vamps and raves about how 'producers get no respect,' and we get the strange sensation that he is himself a unabashed politician...
Will any child want to jump out of bed on Christmas morning and rush off to a Quentin Tarantino film? Can Wag the Dog possibly be mistaken for a Snoopy holiday special? Does the 19th century Australia of Oscar and Lucinda have nearly the same Christmas kick as Scrooge's London? And Woody Allen, musing on death and betrayal--now there's the cure for seasonal depression...