Jerry: A man who wasn’t elected president acting the role. Boy, did we pick a time to talk about this movie, my friend.

Tyler: You ain’t kidding.

Jerry: But rather than a discourse about the present, this is a discussion about the movie Dave which was released back in 1993 and features a star-studded cast.

Funny enough, this was actually my first time watching the movie all the way through though I know I’ve seen bits and pieces of it here and there over the years.

Tyler: I was pleasantly surprised to find myself familiar with it down to the dialogue.  I knew I had watched and liked Dave as a kid, but I guess I revisited it a whole lot more than I realized.

Jerry: I definitely had the thought at the end of why haven’t I watched it before now and that it will be one that I revisit in the future.

Tyler: It’s delightful.  A valentine to America at its best.

Jerry: And how apropos that we’re talking about it on Valentine’s Eve!

Tyler: Has Valentine’s been struck from the roll yet?  Are we still allowed to honor this one?

Jerry: I think it’s still on the calendar as of this moment. Who knows what the future holds, though? There are plenty more EOs to roll out, I have no doubt.

But to begin at the beginning, this movie starts by introducing two key characters: President William Harrison Mitchell and Dave Kovic, both of whom of course are played by Kevin Kline.

Tyler: Kline is such a wonderful screen presence.  The guy’s a comfort.

Jerry: And the fact that he gets to play two very different characters is, of course, one of the main plot points of this movie. President Mitchell is cold and rude whereas we’re introduced to Dave when he comes out smiling and riding on a pig while impersonating President Mitchell.

Tyler: Seeing him as Mitchell was jarring, even though I knew what was coming.  Kevin Kline isn’t supposed to be a jerk!

I did find myself, I wouldn’t say eyerolling, but certainly chuckling about how aw-shucks Dave is in the early going.

Jerry: Oh yeah, Kline definitely ramps up that loveable yokel bit for his main role in this movie.

Tyler: I mean, you gotta give props to a movie that leads into rather a risque penis joke with Kline singing a modified, innocent “Hail To The Chief” in the shower.  “Hail to the chief, he’s the one we all say ‘hail’ to.  We all say hail ‘cause he keeps himself so clean!”

Jerry: That was a hilarious scene after the ol’ switcharoo as a Secret Service agent played by a very young Ving Rhames sees how closely Dave resembles the President and asks him to help in a scheme to get Mitchell out of an event safely while everyone’s focused on Dave.

Tyler: Oh, but wait!  I do believe Dave was recruited not for safety’s sake, but rather so that President Mitchell can tryst with an also very young Laura Linney.

Jerry: Something that aw-shucks Dave would learn later, but that we the audience know from the beginning as Mitchell ends up having a major stroke while he and Laura Linney’s character are, um, getting to know one another better if you get my drift.

Tyler: Ages ago, it must’ve been around the time of the film’s release, I saw a review that summed up Mitchell as a George Bush-esque Republican with Clintonian carnal weaknesses.

Jerry: Very apt description.

And, of course, with Mitchell incapacitated, a plot is hatched.

You know when Frank Langella comes on screen that things are about to get shady.

Tyler: Langella, who in recent years was booted from a Netflix show for being a pure unadulterated creepshow, plays in Dave the nefarious White House Chief of Staff Bob Alexander.

Jerry: Alexander comes up with a scheme wherein Dave will step in for Mitchell and act as President (with Alexander being his puppetmaster, er, I mean, always dutiful and helpful advisor) until Mitchell recovers. They’ll keep this as a secret from everyone except for the Communications Director, Alan Reed, played by Kevin Dunn. I mean, when you want to carry out a secret plan, you always want to have the chief communications expert on your side.

And though Alexander tries to portray this as a “selfless act” (which, of course, aw-shucks Dave buys initially), when he sternly says, “Don’t call the Vice President,” we the audience pick up on the fact that something is not as it seems.

Tyler: Alexander is a real wonder.  By the middle of the movie he’s conniving to smear the vice president—played by Ben Kingsley!—allowing Dave to nominate Alexander for VP, just in time for Dave to be shunted away and the real Mitchell to die of his original stroke, leaving Alexander as President.  Chicanery!

Jerry: Dun Dun Duuuuun!

But, of course, another person left out of this scheme is the First Lady, Ellen Mitchell, played by the amazing Sigourney Weaver.

Tyler: Sigourney owns it.  Strong, stern, but not icy.

Jerry: All Dave’s told is that Ellen can’t stand the President, and like any yokel brought off straight from the countryside brownstones of Georgetown is wont to do, he starts to wonder why because he finds her intriguing.

Tyler: So intriguing, indeed, that he dares to sneak a look through her bedroom window as he takes a night sojourn on a White House balcony!  Naturally, the sultry Ellen is in her bed, engaged in some sensuous policy review.

Jerry: That’s what passes for foreplay in DC, or so I’m told. Nothing turns folks on more in the District than a domestic policy briefing paper.

Tyler: Well, then, Dave and Ellen are made for each other.  Once Dave gets a sense of what he can pull off as “president”—after all, if Dave gets busted, so does Alexander—he throws his weight behind Ellen’s support of homelessness relief, and eventually frontlines his own passion for finding folks jobs.

The wonderfully unrealistic Cabinet scene where Dave uses pencil, paper, and persuasion to slice $650 million from the federal budget, boy, I love it.  If only.

Jerry: A pen and paper is not nearly as effective as a bulldozer, but I digress. Increasingly, Dave shows that he’s getting into being president, and Alexander is none too pleased at this. “What do you mean he’s doing the job that I gave him to do in order to make it my job through my nefarious scheme, er, I mean, selfless devotion to nation?”

Tyler: I just chuckled aloud.  Langella is so good at playing a colossal louse.

Jerry: And increasingly, every time Langella comes on screen, one starts to cringe. Likewise, the rose colored glasses start coming off of Dave’s eyes, and he realizes, “Oh, wait, I’m the President. I don’t have to take this crap. Let’s fire this guy.”

Tyler: We haven’t even mentioned the laws broken by Alexander, Mitchell, and poor Alan.  Campaign finance violations!  Donor intimidation!  Favors!  Alexander and Alan think they can push it all off on VP Nance, but man, that’s a tall order even for a fantasy of Dave’s magnitude.  You’re going down, Bob!

Jerry: And then Dave has a chance to actually meet the Vice President and comes to decide that Ben Kingsley should really be running the country and not him. Cue dramatic plot climax – speech to a joint session of Congress.

Tyler: Ben Kingsley would probably make a better President than lots and lots of actual chief executives.  He’s Ben Kingsley!

Jerry: I’d vote for him any day! Except, of course, for the fact that he’s British by birth. Let’s see what we can do about that, can we? 

In the meantime, we have the dramatic speech where Dave (still posing as Mitchell) admits to Mitchell’s wrongdoings, implicates Alexander in it, and then…wait for it, wait for it…has a “stroke.”

Tyler: I guess my awareness of what was coming allowed me to notice how perilously close Dave comes to bonking his head as he collapses from feigned illness.

Jerry: I definitely need to rewatch it now as I didn’t notice that!

Tyler: It’s a wild concoction of a plan in a movie that’s already out there: Dave collapses at the lectern, his friend the Secret Service agent Duane—let’s just say Ving Rhames—hollers for a doctor, and then…switcheroo!

Jerry: Two comatose Presidents would definitely have been one too many, so thankfully, Dave was able to walk away while the comatose Mitchell was wheeled back out to linger for a few months before passing away in the public spotlight.

Meanwhile, Dave goes back to his regular life, no one any the wiser. Except, of course, the now widowed Ellen Mitchell.

Cue the romantic music…

Tyler: And Duane!  I mean Ving!

Jerry: I mean, if he wanted to have a romance with Ving Rhames, can anyone blame him? But it was the early 90s. The big studios weren’t doing those kinds of movies just yet.

Tyler: Jerry, let’s face it, this plot doesn’t stand up to the slightest hint of scrutiny.  The movie is great.  But cameoing, conspiracy-solving Oliver Stone would’ve been vindicated within one investigative article about Ellen Mitchell’s Latest Beau.  Why, he looks just like her dead husband, the former President!  A former President who was guarded by Ving, who now works for Dave’s nascent political campaign!  The thing would fall apart, I tell you.

Jerry: As I’ve learned over the years, my friend, sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy a fictional cinematic experience. This movie was always meant to be a light-hearted romantic romp that had a President in a comatose state hidden away in some secret underground bunker while a coup to undermine democracy was being carried out by high ranking administration officials. But just look at the way Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver make googly eyes at one another!

I’ll be honest, to my better half’s detriment, some of my favorite movies make no sense in the plot department but bring about all of the feels, and this is certainly one of those.

No one won any awards from this one, but gosh darn it, Dave is a cozy cinematic experience so long as you don’t overthink it.

Tyler: And hey, it really is a fine piece of work.  Director Ivan Reitman and screenwriter Gary Ross capture an air of Capra.  I know that’s bold praise, but Dave does fill you with a righteous citizen’s love of these United States.

It also makes you crave sandwiches.  Two sandwich scenes in this movie!  I normally wouldn’t abide sliced carrots as a topping, but I trust Dave.

Jerry: There’s nothing as American as sandwiches, except for, of course, apple pie or pizza or Freedom Fries, all of which absolutely started in America and if anyone says otherwise, they’re unpatriotic.

Tyler: Jerry, now that we’ve established Dave as among our better fictional Commanders in Chief, let’s let our readers know where they can find your epic tapestry depicting the—actual—Presidential history of our country.

Jerry: Thanks so much, Tyler! If folks want to know more about the real POTUSes (POTi?), I hope they check out the Presidencies of the United States, available anywhere fine podcasts can be found. You can get to it directly through the website at presidenciespodcast.com or by connecting through social media. I’m available on Facebook, Bluesky, and Mastodon as presidencies, on the formerly known as Twitter as presidencies89, and on Instagram and Threads as presidenciespodcast.

Tyler: Maybe you can do an episode on Dave for April Fool’s Day.

Jerry: Shh, secret! You know how I love dressing up as presidents…

Don’t tempt me with a good time.

Tyler: Just don’t forget the sandwiches.

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