Overlooked Movies -- Wag the Dog

Hard to believe this movie appeared in 1997.  Seems like only a couple of years ago.  Maybe part of that is because I'm an old guy, but part of it is because the movie's just as relevant now as it was then.

The president of the U.S. is running for reelection and gets involved in bit of a scandal with an underage girl.  Conrad Brean (Robert de Niro) is the spin doctor brought in to distract the nation from the scandal.  His solution is to get the country into a fake war with Albania, and he hires Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to do the faking.  

This cunning plan works at first, and when it starts to unravel, Conrad and Stanley go to greater and greater lengths to cover things up.  The more bizarre it gets, the funnier it gets, or at least that's how I found it.  At each disaster, Stanley declares, "This is nothing!" and comes up with a story from his Hollywood past to top it.  And then goes on to create more outrageous incidents.  The CIA gets involved, but Stanley and Conrad get them on board with the plot.  Things get all too real in the end, and it's easy to believe something like this could happen just as it's shown in the movie.

De Niro and Hoffman are great, but so is the rest of the all-star cast.  Things move fast, the dialog is snappy and funny, and the satire is sharp and on point.  Great stuff.