Dick: A

Dick, writer-director Andrew Fleming's delectable truffle of a political satire, is one giddily inventive piece of comedic excellence. Though on its surface (two gleaming young babes, several well-known 70's pop hits) it may seem all carb-lite nothing, Dick inverts the mother of all scandals - Watergate - with a lovable quicksilver daffiness bordering very near intelligence. It is a screwy comedy of coincidence played off with such a delicate touch that it does the near impossible: it makes Nixon funny.

At the center of Dick are two bubbly teens, Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), who together have more bouncy energy and pep than most entire casts. Together they stumble into various Nixon wrong-doings (they discover the Watergate burglarly mid-way through as well as a torn piece of the CREEP pay-off list), supplied to them via several cheerfully ridiculous scenarios. Since they are witnesses, the two girls get whisked up to the Big Man himself, President Nixon (Dan Hedaya) and soon fall into his good graces. Such a spot in his good favor allows them to fall into a wide-range of fun adventures, be it baking "special" cookies for the prez or singing into his secret tape recorder, but they are destined as much as the rest of the nation to discover Richard "Dick" Nixon's true nature, and so they do. What a delightful prank that these two air-heads start out as the audience's cheery rose-colored glasses and end up its slowly awakening moralist soul.

Their bid for revenge brings them into contact with Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch) and the quartet's attempts at revealing the corrupt dealings of the White House are but one attraction in this wicked carnival of satire. Look closely enough and you'll see Harry Shearer go flying by in one of his hilarious cameos. Oh and look, it's Ana Gasteyer in a knock-out role as Nixon's secretary!

In addition, Saul Rubinek and Dave Foley both pop up as yet more administartion cronies who pack a vivid comedic wallop. But so then are they just like the rest of the film: a fluffy hybrid of tacky 70's trash and 90's sassy-bright filmmaking that comes complete with a secret - Dick has a sense of humor that bites with a howl-inducing CRUNCH.