An occasional sounding board wherein I'll hopefully shed a little light on popular movies with unsettling premises or stories.
Dave
I was folding laundry and watching Dave last night when it hit me like never before that this is a comedy about a coup d'etat, a lighthearted romp about replacing the president and dismantling the system of checks and balances to consolidate the power into one man. Kevin Kline stars as Dave, who's hired to stand in for President Bill Mitchell (also Kline), who's in a coma after suffering a stroke while having sex with one of his secretaries, played by a young and energetic Laura Linney.
The First Lady is played by Sigourney Weaver, who eventually discovers Dave is a fake and has no problem with it. She even winds up coming back to him at the end, after her husband dies, though why she thinks she can make it work with a guy who looks exactly like her adulterous former spouse is beyond me.
The film is set in the 1990s, but Dave doesn't do a single thing regarding foreign policy. I understand that this is an alternate reality where presidents play with puppies and no one seems to want to nuke each other, but still, it's a little farfetched to think that Dave could assume the duties of the Oval Office and not have to deal with a single terrorist action or rogue Soviet satellite (the film came out in 1993).
Anyway, it's still a cute, harmless movie, and I find myself unable to change the channel whenever he balances the budget at a Cabinet meeting to save that pesky old homeless shelter, though maybe it's just the sight of a president who can do high-school-level multiplication that's so compelling.
Verdict: Enjoyable, but so idealistic it makes Aaron Sorkin look like Stephen Gaghan.
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Los Angeles, California I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day" for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic. This Month
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