My alphabetical run through Sky Movies is updated by the arrival of another new film with numbers in the title. This one is a . . . Comedy drama, I guess . . . With apparently many references to the Watergate scandal which, I have to admit, I only know the bare minimum about.
Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) is a white house stenographer who accidentally discovers a recording of Nixon (Bruce Campbell) and his aides listening to and discussing the missing 18 1/2 minutes from the Watergate tapes. She meets journalist Paul (John Magaro) and they decide to head to a waterfront motel complex to listen to the tape. Posing as husband and wife, the pair meet some interesting characters at the venue, and are forced to turn to another couple for help, when their reel to reel tape player doesn't work.
I like the pairing of Fitzgerald and Magaro and I thought they had good chemistry together. Whilst they're getting to play really broad characters, I liked Vondie Curtis-Hall and Catherine Curtin as the married couple that the central pair approach too. I also liked that there were a lot of subtler moments in the film, plot hidden in dialogue and there was a genuine surprise at the end that I didn't see coming.
I really didn't like the film though. I think movies can go awry for any number of reasons, budgetary, application, conflict on set. Here though, I feel like this is exactly the movie that Dan Mirvish wants it to be. It is quirky and off beat and they aren't things that I usually dislike, but it didn't feel in service of anything here. There are ideas in the second half of the film that take it too far outside of the realms of reality and that eccentric approach to the story feels forced. Quirk for quirks sake, rather than trying to find an original take.
Happy to read that several reviewers found more in this than I did, but for me it gave me a sword and I stuck it in, I'm not twisting it with relish though.
Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) is a white house stenographer who accidentally discovers a recording of Nixon (Bruce Campbell) and his aides listening to and discussing the missing 18 1/2 minutes from the Watergate tapes. She meets journalist Paul (John Magaro) and they decide to head to a waterfront motel complex to listen to the tape. Posing as husband and wife, the pair meet some interesting characters at the venue, and are forced to turn to another couple for help, when their reel to reel tape player doesn't work.
I like the pairing of Fitzgerald and Magaro and I thought they had good chemistry together. Whilst they're getting to play really broad characters, I liked Vondie Curtis-Hall and Catherine Curtin as the married couple that the central pair approach too. I also liked that there were a lot of subtler moments in the film, plot hidden in dialogue and there was a genuine surprise at the end that I didn't see coming.
I really didn't like the film though. I think movies can go awry for any number of reasons, budgetary, application, conflict on set. Here though, I feel like this is exactly the movie that Dan Mirvish wants it to be. It is quirky and off beat and they aren't things that I usually dislike, but it didn't feel in service of anything here. There are ideas in the second half of the film that take it too far outside of the realms of reality and that eccentric approach to the story feels forced. Quirk for quirks sake, rather than trying to find an original take.
Happy to read that several reviewers found more in this than I did, but for me it gave me a sword and I stuck it in, I'm not twisting it with relish though.