This preface is meant to explain why, in the face of withering reviews by Messrs. Susman and Showbiz, I went to see Wag the Dog today in an office outing. It has the fortuitous timing to have been released just before the scandal broke, it concerns allegations of sexual misconduct by the president toward a young girl, and it postulates that the president's advisors create a war to divert attention (if Clinton does anything to respond to Iraq's defiance of chemical weapons inspectors, he will now be accused of "wagging the dog").
It's really not a very good movie without the subtext of a real-life scandal -- it's sloppily written, sloppily filmed, sloppily conceived. You could fly Air Force One through the plot holes -- we start a war with a country and not one enterprising journalist actually goes to that country to check it out? A conspiracy involving dozens of people and not one of them leaks? Albania has nuclear capability? Please -- Albania barely has electricity.
But with Interncourse as a backdrop, the stupidest jokes become timely and zinging. Eerily enough, the photo of the fictitious president with the "firefly girl" he supposedly molested looks almost exactly like the photo of Clinton with Monica Lewinsky at his victory rally after his reelection -- his back is turned toward the camera, the girl is gazing adoringly into his eyes, and creepiest of all, the firefly girl is wearing a beret! And lines like "I can't remember when a president has had to deal with the flu, a war, and sexual harassment all in the same week" get a huge audience response now.
Otherwise, the movie has nothing to say. Hollywood and Washington are both based on artifice and manipulation? What a shocker. Say it ain't so.
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