Dick

I wish I had some kind of original, inventive take on this mildly funny Watergate spoof, but it's no coincidence that every review I've read or skimmed thus far has included references to Romy & Michele's High School Reunion and Forrest Gump. As it happens, Dick is superior to both of its sources, multiple Oscars notwithstanding: Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams are more appealing than Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow were, if only because it's easier to laugh at 15-year-old bubbleheads than adult ones; the accidental-history gags, meanwhile, work better as the focus of the comedy rather than as a series of goofy digressions interpolated with Vietnam combat scenes and teary graveside eulogies. In what I assume was a rather quixotic attempt not to completely alienate the much-coveted teen audience who's likely to recognize Williams from Dawson's Creek, the era-specific jokes (which is to say, the bulk of them) are last-chapter-of-the-U.S.-history book shallow and nudge-nudge-wink-wink-say-no-more coarse. There's also a tendency to rely too heavily on the usual '70s-music suspects, although an extended montage set to "Lady Marmalade" is wonderful, both because it's expertly crafted and because the juxtaposition of Richard Milhous Nixon and the phrase "gitchy gitchy ya ya ya ya" is impossible to resist. Nothing to get excited about, but diverting enough, and eminently optional. (M. D'Angelo)