Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman collaborate and con the entire United States voting public. Great idea, right?
Right. That's why it's so disappointing for me to only be able to rate this movie 5/10. De Niro is scruffy and jaded and dry (per usual, but he's great at it), Hoffman bumbles endearingly, and the entire production curls up and dies twenty minutes in. Color me unimpressed.
It's hard to tell what the writers thought the climax was, but they were wrong. Watch the first twenty minutes and you'll be in love, watch the first thirty and you'll be bored. Wag the Dog loses steam after it invests the entirety of itself in one joke: that the public will throw itself behind a war if only the media baits it in that direction.
The rest is downhill. Things go wrong as De Niro and Heche try to keep their heads above water until the election, but not wrong enough to be funny. I'm upset that more energy wasn't put into the script. Did nobody realize they had Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman on the same side of a political satire? Hello? Where was the quick, witty banter? It pains me to say that their interactions were funnier in Meet the Fockers.
All in all, lots of potential but an upsetting execution. The idea of this movie is funnier than the movie itself.
Right. That's why it's so disappointing for me to only be able to rate this movie 5/10. De Niro is scruffy and jaded and dry (per usual, but he's great at it), Hoffman bumbles endearingly, and the entire production curls up and dies twenty minutes in. Color me unimpressed.
It's hard to tell what the writers thought the climax was, but they were wrong. Watch the first twenty minutes and you'll be in love, watch the first thirty and you'll be bored. Wag the Dog loses steam after it invests the entirety of itself in one joke: that the public will throw itself behind a war if only the media baits it in that direction.
The rest is downhill. Things go wrong as De Niro and Heche try to keep their heads above water until the election, but not wrong enough to be funny. I'm upset that more energy wasn't put into the script. Did nobody realize they had Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman on the same side of a political satire? Hello? Where was the quick, witty banter? It pains me to say that their interactions were funnier in Meet the Fockers.
All in all, lots of potential but an upsetting execution. The idea of this movie is funnier than the movie itself.