Classic Movie Review: 'Dave'

Dave (1993)

Directed by Ivan Reitman

Written by Gary Ross

Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, Ben Kingsley

Release Date May 7th, 1993

Published June 7th, 2023

Dave is one of the nicest movies ever made. This is such a good hearted, sweet, sincere movie that it feels entirely anachronistic a mere 30 years after its release. Politics in America has gotten so much uglier, nastier, and mean over the last 3 decades that Dave feels like a throwback to the 1930s rather than the 1990s. In Dave, politics is still filled with pit vipers and vile men with self-interested aims, but good is seemingly on an equal footing with the bad guy and more than capable of defeating the bad.

That feels quaint today where it's nearly impossible to believe in or remotely trust anyone in an elected office. In 1993 director Ivan Reitman and writer Gary Ross were able to get away with making a political movie that never once mentions a party affiliation. The film is about the United States President and yet we never learn if he is a Republican or Democrat. The politics are able to somehow be so fuzzy that it could be either party in charge. This would be considered cowardice in this day and age and Reitman and Ross would be castigated by both sides.

Dave is perhaps one of the last signposts of a pre-internet era of politics, a time where the lack of a constant need to feed the beast that is social media, allowed for the kind of political crossroads that seem impossible today. In the pre-internet era, parties crossed over party lines to vote what they believed in. Today, party lines are so strict, members are rumored to be leaving their party if they even consider voting against the party line agenda. The politics of Dave are, of course, secondary to the humorous conceit and central romance of the movie but it's still quite a notable indicator of just how far things have changed for the worse in Washington D.C.

Dave stars Kevin Kline as Dave, the friendliest man in his neighborhood. When he isn't finding a job for everyone he's ever met via his temp business, Dave is opening restaurants and car dealerships portraying the President of the United States, President William Harrison Mitchell (also played by Kline), with whom he shares a striking resemblance. That resemblance is soon noticed by the White House who draft Dave to portray a Presidential double to protect the President as he leaves for a secret meeting. What Dave doesn't know, but we do, is that this meeting is actually an affair with his secretary, played by a young Laura Linney.

During this tryst, President Mitchell suffers a massive stroke and nearly dies. Instead of informing the world and moving the chain of command to the Vice President, played by Ben Kingsley, a pair of the President's closest advisors decide to hire Dave to cover for President Mitchell as the President of the United States. And it works. While Dave is able to convince the world that the President is alive and well, Frank Langella's Bob Alexander and Kevin Dunn's Alan Reed, scheme to run things behind the President's back.

The fly in the ointment of this plan, the tripping point of the whole enterprise, is the First Lady, Ellen Mitchell, played by Sigourney Weaver. At first, the question is whether Dave can fool the First Lady into believing that he is her husband. The bigger complication comes when Dave falls for the First Lady and a romance begins to bloom. Wanting to impress her, Dave begins to charm everyone around him and when confronted with a political crisis that puts him at odds with the First Lady, Dave's goodness causes him to upend his handlers plans to seize power.

Dave is such a wonderful character and Kevin Kline plays the character with great relish. The nice guy qualities he brings to Dave are never cloying or pushy, he's just the kind of mensch you would love to know in real life. He's one of those 'give you the shirt off his back' kinds of guy. He's genuinely wholesome but with a glint in his eye that shows you he's no schmuck. He's capable and brave and when he needs to step up for what's right, he does it with aplomb and no concern or self-preservation.

Director Ivan Reitman and Writer Gary Ross invented a wonderful character but Kline brings Dave fully to life with his vitality, wit and warmth. Dave's wholesome qualities versus the ugliness and backbiting of Washington politics is a pitch perfect pivot point for comic tension. Where Washington is mean and nasty, Dave is a gigantic sweetheart who genuinely wants to do good things for anyone and everyone he meets.

The sincerity of Kline's performance is striking and deeply underrated as a character trait. Late in Dave, when he's shaken off the reigns of Langella's villainous puppet master, Dave as President Mitchell delivers a wonderful speech about how inspiring and gratifying it is to see the look on someone's face when they get a job that he knows is going to help them get by. He proceeds to propose legislation to help find jobs for anyone who is genuinely searching for one. It's the kind of vague and uplifting bit of fluff that likely doesn't hold up to scrutiny but as pitched by Kline, it's moving and inspiring.

But Dave is also quite funny. Kline's charm seems to have no bounds as Dave leaps into being the fake President. He seems to try and charm everyone but it's really just who Dave is. He inspires smiles in nearly everyone he meets with his genuine goodness. This is a rare and beautiful quality and one all too unfamiliar in movies today where everyone prefers looking cool to being genuine. Kline recalls Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington but with a more knowing wit and self-awareness. It's as if Dave were the child of Smith's dreamer and Jean Arthur's cynical but hopeful Washington insider.

I adore Dave. The film is fun and wholesome in a non-cloying way. Wholesome in the most modern sense, a movie that never inspires dread or cringe. It depicts a pre-Clinton scandal politics where disagreements lead to policy debates and backroom deals are about shifting where money goes from a less needed project to another more needed one. It's a Washington that likely never existed, it's always been ugly, we're just more privy to the nastiness than ever before, but one we wish did exist. And I bet we'd all love to have a guy like Dave in Washington, standing up for the little guy, speaking out for what's right and charming everyone with his wide-eyed sincerity.

Dave was a recent subject of my new podcast, a spinoff of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, Everyone's a Critic 1993. Each week, myself and my co-hosts, teenager M.J and Gen-X-er Amy, watch a movie from 30 years ago that weekend in chronological release order. It's been a revelation to see how movies and culture have changed in just the last 30 years. Dave is perhaps the best example of how the internet age has shifted our discourse in just a decade from a time when compromises were fought hard for to today where one side beating the other is more important than actually accomplishing anything.

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