DAVE (1993)
Retrospective by Jerry Saravia
After an initial screening of "Dave" back in 1993, I did not know how to react. Here was a comedy by Ivan Reitman, best known for "Ghostbusters," and he made a movie that made me laugh in many places, that had its finite comic timing, engaging movie stars like Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver, had its fill of Frank Capra idealism, and yet it left me feeling cold and a little shaken up. Why was the movie making me feel that way? And so for years, I resisted seeing it again. I knew it was a definite good movie but something about it irked me. Seeing it again recently, I am still not sure what it was but I can say that "Dave" is a superb experience and its Capraesque idealism, which may have suited Bill Clinton though not the terms he served, is something we could use now. The cornball belief that a President of the United States might actually care about his citizens, residents and immigrants is something that we should hope for.
Kevin Kline plays Bill Mitchell, the President of the U.S., the kind of President who shakes his arms up and gets a crowd riled up followed by enthusiastic applause at his every word. When he is at charity events, he reads from a teleprompter and his upbeat messages rang false to me but not to the crowd. Discussion during closed meetings about orphanages needing money is not much of an agenda for Bill, well, as long as he doesn't look like a prick; he could care less. The Mitchell Family dogs for a photo opportunity are then left to their handlers - he is simply there as a showman but he is not really
there. Behind closed doors at the White House, the frosty Ellen Mitchell, the First Lady (Sigourney Weaver), sleeps in a separate bedroom, fully aware that this man is a cheater and a charlatan. Bill has to have his little affair with a woman working the phones at the White House (played by Laura Linney, who I forgot was even in this). When President Bill gets a heart attack during coitus, a replacement is needed fast. Enter the aloof and terminally wicked White House Chief of Staff (Frank Langella) who decides not to tell the Vice President (Ben Kingsley) about the events that are transpiring - he decides to use the President's uncanny double, Dave Kovic (also played by Kline), whom they used earlier to cover for the President's hotel tryst. Will this deception work? It might, for a while, especially when Ellen barely sees Bill unless they have to make a public appearance. But the cat slowly falls out of the bag when Dave is everything Bill Mitchell is not - he is upbeat, can throw baseballs during a game with ease, speaks to young kids at an orphanage as if they mattered, wants to fix the budget by appropriating funds where they matter most (thanks to help from his accountant friend played by a hilarious Charles Grodin), and can even cook a meal while trying to get to know the top, virtually unsmiling Secret Service aide (a purposely stiff Ving Rhames). Predictably, Ellen sees through all this, knowing the President is not the same man because her husband never spoke with such sincerity.
"Dave" has a consistent breezy tone and also an added sense of urgency about how we wish the Presidency was like this. Despite Dave playing it up for the people, he
genuinely believes in the ideals that he thought defined the Presidency. When things get awry and Dave has to sneak away without being discovered of the fraud he helped to perpetrate, I honestly felt emotional about it. The movie never plays up the sentimentality of its Capraesque notions, or of those that feel that the last great President was John F. Kennedy who was a known philanderer. I choked up because I bought into an average person like Dave, who works at a temp agency where he really hopes every client can get a job, and his willingness to do good and to be embraced for his goodwill towards the American people. In hindsight, 1995's "The American President" rang a little false in terms of positive, idealistic speeches made by its President played by Michael Douglas, despite a game cast and entertaining direction by Rob Reiner. Director Ivan Reitman aims deeper, to give us an America we thought we once had until corruption and greed basically nullified it. The movie gives us the solidity and finality of secrets confined to the walls and pillars of the White House, as if trickery always had the upper hand in politics - it is realistically conveyed for what is at heart a charming, humanistic comedy. Perhaps that is what I found initially offputting about "Dave" - that it was unrealistic to assume that a fearless leader would care about the little guy. Back in 1993, during the beginning of Clinton's presidency, we knew better. Now, in 2018, we are hoping that fantasy becomes real.
