I found this a ridiculous waste of time. Non factual cheap production which all relies on an erased tape. Tape recorders cannot Record & Play at the same time! You could press Record & play to Record only, but not as this film suggests, Record while listening to the said tape.
17 Reviews
The Tapes of Wraith
southdavid10 November 2022
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.
Lost
boblipton20 January 2024
It's 1974. White House transcriptionist -- someone who takes recordings and converts them into written records -- Willa Fitzgerald has the missing tape recording of Nixon that everyone is hot for. She meets up with reporter John Magaro and they go to a motel in Maryland to listen to the tapes, but his reel-to-reel player is broken. However, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Catherine Curtain at the cabin next to theirs have been listening to a tape of bossa nova non-stop.
It plays more like an extended anecdote than a story, so it's good they have some talent in place that can play it for comedy, like Richard Kind as the one-eyed motel owner, and Alexander Woodbury as a fisherman.
It's certainly an entertaining satire, if not particularly deep. Still, who knew that Bruce Campbell could do such a good Nixon impersonation?
It plays more like an extended anecdote than a story, so it's good they have some talent in place that can play it for comedy, like Richard Kind as the one-eyed motel owner, and Alexander Woodbury as a fisherman.
It's certainly an entertaining satire, if not particularly deep. Still, who knew that Bruce Campbell could do such a good Nixon impersonation?
No Direction
stevensmith-5133015 October 2022
The film has a great premise but it is very poorly executed. The film should be a thriller but it dissappears into weird sub plots which add nothing to the story and rather then draw you in just make you think what the hell has this got to do with anything.
It spins off direction so much that you lose interest in what should have been an interesting subject.
The extra characters are ridiculous left wing stereotypes that are just annoying and wish weren't in the film. It hard to tell whether this was aimed at discrediting left wing politics or if the director actually believes this.
Such a waste of a good idea.
It spins off direction so much that you lose interest in what should have been an interesting subject.
The extra characters are ridiculous left wing stereotypes that are just annoying and wish weren't in the film. It hard to tell whether this was aimed at discrediting left wing politics or if the director actually believes this.
Such a waste of a good idea.
Was this meant to be a joke?
jimbo-53-18651113 October 2022
When a transcriber obtains the only copy of Nixon's infamous 18 and a half minute long tape. Enlisting the help of a reporter, Connie sets to work in trying to undercover the truth behind the Watergate scandal, but she soon finds several obstacles in her path....
Whilst 18 1/2 starts off quite serious and seems intent on following a narrative path that the audience expects it to follow, it quickly goes from being intriguing to being surreal and somewhat bizarre...
The main focus of the film lies with Connie and Paul and their desire to find a reel to reel tape player in order to be able to fully understand the corruption with Nixon and his government. Whilst this is running in the background, it seems to take a back seat to the weird array of characters that we are introduced to; they aren't there for any real purpose other than to confound and baffle...
The picture really becomes messy in its second half with its multiple reveals; which have to be seen to be believed; it's at this point that the picture goes from being real to being surreal. It becomes too goofy in its second half and ends up being impossible to take seriously. The two leads are OK, but don't seem to have much of a dynamic and they also have an awkward chemistry about them too.
I really tried getting my head round this film and tried to get into the mind-set of those that made it and despite my best efforts I simply couldn't. I presume it's supposed to be a light-hearted take on the events leading up to the Watergate scandal, but I'm not entirely convinced that this was the right material to be given goofball treatment too. It's a shame as it started so well and ended so badly.
The only other time I can remember a film beginning with such promise and ending so badly was From Dusk till Dawn, but at least that film had some decent acting talent.
Whilst 18 1/2 starts off quite serious and seems intent on following a narrative path that the audience expects it to follow, it quickly goes from being intriguing to being surreal and somewhat bizarre...
The main focus of the film lies with Connie and Paul and their desire to find a reel to reel tape player in order to be able to fully understand the corruption with Nixon and his government. Whilst this is running in the background, it seems to take a back seat to the weird array of characters that we are introduced to; they aren't there for any real purpose other than to confound and baffle...
The picture really becomes messy in its second half with its multiple reveals; which have to be seen to be believed; it's at this point that the picture goes from being real to being surreal. It becomes too goofy in its second half and ends up being impossible to take seriously. The two leads are OK, but don't seem to have much of a dynamic and they also have an awkward chemistry about them too.
I really tried getting my head round this film and tried to get into the mind-set of those that made it and despite my best efforts I simply couldn't. I presume it's supposed to be a light-hearted take on the events leading up to the Watergate scandal, but I'm not entirely convinced that this was the right material to be given goofball treatment too. It's a shame as it started so well and ended so badly.
The only other time I can remember a film beginning with such promise and ending so badly was From Dusk till Dawn, but at least that film had some decent acting talent.
a monster miss...
ops-5253513 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
If youre in for some historical amendments to your political knowledge, god was i disapointed, viewing nixon on the poster, and hes barely blown outta the picture completely, so do a walkover on this one if its your main intention.
Its a limping multidigressiv story about some hush hush cloacked meeting with a stenographer and a journalist releving a soundtape of watergate secrets, meeting in a cafe, ending up at a motel site, to listen in,but when starting their band recorder, the soundhead where missing and that starts the race between middleaged bosanova lovers and revolutionary hippies who lives at the campus hunting for a functional tapeband recorder...
there are some lowbrowcomedy to it that doesnt raise a grumpy old mans flag at all. But the arrangement of fashion and decorating very much like the era of time, that is hardly the positive things i might mention. Its a very verbal exercise comedy, the acts are bland and the tone of it all kinda embarrasing and time consuming, no the grumpy old man feels tricked and tailed by this one, just a three...
Its a limping multidigressiv story about some hush hush cloacked meeting with a stenographer and a journalist releving a soundtape of watergate secrets, meeting in a cafe, ending up at a motel site, to listen in,but when starting their band recorder, the soundhead where missing and that starts the race between middleaged bosanova lovers and revolutionary hippies who lives at the campus hunting for a functional tapeband recorder...
there are some lowbrowcomedy to it that doesnt raise a grumpy old mans flag at all. But the arrangement of fashion and decorating very much like the era of time, that is hardly the positive things i might mention. Its a very verbal exercise comedy, the acts are bland and the tone of it all kinda embarrasing and time consuming, no the grumpy old man feels tricked and tailed by this one, just a three...
Enjoyable "what if" movie.
anthony-epp31 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I love the premise and Willa's performance is great. The filming style is very 70's which I think lends itself well to the story. The climax is fun and frantic. Overall enjoyed the movie and appreciate the historical references.
tight drama to farce and time wasted
suespy22 October 2022
Warning: Spoilers
What could have been an engaging tense drama descended into farce with over the top performances and irrelevant hippy characters as if we needed reminding what era we were in. Maybe it made more sense to American audiences but the confused ending got lost in the fracas. One should never watch a movie and regret the time invested in it but this is one.
A meal order paying homage to 'When Harry met Sally' a creepy motel and mixed ethnic couple we are supposed to believe had been married for years at a time when that would not happen all to increase the obligatory diversity count. All the precautions when they enter their room then do not pull all the curtains yeah right.... sorry but curtains for this.
A meal order paying homage to 'When Harry met Sally' a creepy motel and mixed ethnic couple we are supposed to believe had been married for years at a time when that would not happen all to increase the obligatory diversity count. All the precautions when they enter their room then do not pull all the curtains yeah right.... sorry but curtains for this.
Insult to your intelligence
jagatto@yahoo.com23 October 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Ninety minutes to tell a 10 minute story. The other 80 minutes was irrelevant filler. Clearly a story worthy of the 90 minutes of your time, but the director couldn't decide what movie he wanted to make. Obviously, no one knows what happened to the tape, so the director had total creative license here and he decided to insult our intelligence by depicting the erasure of the tape and its subsequent disappearance using a method that is a technical impossibility. He could have chosen countless other plausible ways. I can't figure out if this was laziness (lack of continuity research) or poking fun at the audience and embracing the obvious error. Either way, it was annoying and left me shaking my head. I understand it's a comedy, but that is not funny- neither subjectively nor objectively. Just plain stupid.
Brilliant Satire of the Watergate Scandal
shimonmor27 June 2022
This is not a documentary nor an accurate history of events but a humorous send-up of the scandal itself. The story itself is a funny-mirror reflection of the (not so) mysterious tape erasure.
Meandering away from Watergate, most of the film explores and revels in eccentric characters and their interactions. Subtle humor and satire abound if you pay attention and let down your hair: conspiracy theories involving Wonder Bread and ITT; Bossa nova music; broken tape machines; mysterious fishermen; one-eyed desk clerks.
Smatterings of the missing 18½ minute recording are revealed and they are nothing more than what we expect although amplified through a filter of ridiculousness and cartoonish caricatures. It really helps to be a student of Watergate and recognize the various characters like Mark Felt (who is referenced hilariously), H. R. Haldeman, Al Haig and Rosemary Woods in order to "get" all the jokes.
This film is an unexpected surprise. Wry, intelligent humor, a brisk pace and wonderful characters make for winning combination. Worth a second viewing to catch all those subtle cues and clues. Bravo, Mr. Mirvish.
Meandering away from Watergate, most of the film explores and revels in eccentric characters and their interactions. Subtle humor and satire abound if you pay attention and let down your hair: conspiracy theories involving Wonder Bread and ITT; Bossa nova music; broken tape machines; mysterious fishermen; one-eyed desk clerks.
Smatterings of the missing 18½ minute recording are revealed and they are nothing more than what we expect although amplified through a filter of ridiculousness and cartoonish caricatures. It really helps to be a student of Watergate and recognize the various characters like Mark Felt (who is referenced hilariously), H. R. Haldeman, Al Haig and Rosemary Woods in order to "get" all the jokes.
This film is an unexpected surprise. Wry, intelligent humor, a brisk pace and wonderful characters make for winning combination. Worth a second viewing to catch all those subtle cues and clues. Bravo, Mr. Mirvish.
Looks good, story is a total miss
cyclops_screener22 June 2022
The movie has a fascinating premise: a lowly Washington stenographer in the early 1970s comes across a tape of Richard Nixon and his henchmen listening to the missing 18 and a half minutes from the "Nixon Tapes." Problem is, the filmmaker does all he can to avoid telling the story. The movie is a strange period piece, a vehicle for showing off retro fashions and furnishings. Great attention to detail in those departments, but the story was utterly neglected. The actor playing Richard Nixon doesn't even sound like him.
I feel cheated and slightly dirty.
kimbpaul19 June 2023
The premise sounded interesting, "what if...??"
Started slow, had some really unnecessary characters, probably just to fill time. I was annoyed and grossed out by the whole bossa nova - dinner scene & had to fast-forward through most of it. Blechhh! Surely the writer could have come up with a better way to insert these characters into the storyline? Ugh. So I got to the end, and I was even madder. I had to rewind because another reviewer mentioned the play/record button. I was then able to listen to the "recording" and ignore the fight scene, then the ending made slightly more sense, but still.....soooo many plot holes. I'm pi$$ed off and feel cheated out an ending that would have worked. The wonderbread arc was totally ridiculous. I really wish I hadn't seen this. Can't recommend it. Skip it. I promise, you're going to wish you had if you watch it anyway. Don't say you weren't warned.
Watered down gate.
SpeakingEye18 October 2022
Warning: Spoilers
As an American politics lover, I saw the synopsis for this film and gave it a try. The start was good, a clandestine meeting in an out of the way restaurant. There was a good build of tension as the stenographer and journalist realised the scale of what they were taking on.
The movie then proceeded to jump off a cliff the moment the couple arrived at a hotel. Spoiler alert, the whole film is then based in an out of the way hotel filled with awful dreary supporting characters delivering toe curlingly bad improvised dialogue. After a while you will end up pleading with the film to get back to the central point of the plot, ie. The most important political event of the American 20th century. If that wasn't enough, when the big reveal of the tape contents is made, the film makers bizarrely add some sex and violence just in case us viewers find the politically dynamite contents a bit boring to listen to.
Overall, this film is a self indulgent mess.
The movie then proceeded to jump off a cliff the moment the couple arrived at a hotel. Spoiler alert, the whole film is then based in an out of the way hotel filled with awful dreary supporting characters delivering toe curlingly bad improvised dialogue. After a while you will end up pleading with the film to get back to the central point of the plot, ie. The most important political event of the American 20th century. If that wasn't enough, when the big reveal of the tape contents is made, the film makers bizarrely add some sex and violence just in case us viewers find the politically dynamite contents a bit boring to listen to.
Overall, this film is a self indulgent mess.
Nothing but a Hoax of a Movie
darryl-tahirali14 April 2024
Writer-director Dan Mirvish perpetrated a 2008 internet hoax by masquerading as Republican strategist "Martin Eisenstadt" during the US presidential elections, hoodwinking actual news agencies before they got wise. Mirvish's latest hoax is "18 1/2," although he and co-writer Daniel Moya do establish a plausible, well-crafted, even clever premise to kick off this cockeyed take on the Watergate scandal that eventually forced the 1974 resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon.
Background briefing: During the 1972 US elections, Nixon political operatives, known as the "plumbers" and funded in part by contributions to his re-election campaign, were caught burgling Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex in Washington, DC, in June 1972.
Investigations led by Democratic Senator Sam Ervin revealed Nixon's voice-activated tape-recording system in the White House. Ervin's attempts to subpoena those tape recordings met with resistance, with some of the tapes received having noticeable gaps in the conversations---including one tape, recorded three days after the Watergate burglary, whose gap lasted for eighteen-and-a-half minutes.
The proffered explanation was that Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal White House secretary fiercely loyal to him, "accidentally" erased the tape while answering the telephone, an act that required her to perform such implausible physical contortions that the media quickly and derisively dubbed them the "Rose Mary Stretch."
Once former FBI assistant director Mark Felt revealed himself in 2005 to be "Deep Throat," the anonymous Washington insider who advised reporter Bob Woodward during Watergate, the only real mystery left in the Watergate scandal was what could possibly have been erased from that tape with the 18 1/2-minute gap.
Don't count on Mirvish's movie to shed any light on that mystery, but at least he launches it with a feint toward juiciness that dries up all too quickly.
Connie Lashley (Willa Fitzgerald) works as a transcriber at the Office of Management and Budget, typing up recordings of OMB meetings held at the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. The conversations are so bland and mundane that she and co-worker Cheryl (Marija Abney) dub them "the only boring tapes in Washington." But as she begins to transcribe a tape of a very short meeting, she soon hears the voices of none other than Nixon (voiced by Bruce Campbell) and Chief of Staff Alexander Haig (voiced by Ted Raimi) on the OMB tape.
The OMB uses voice-activated recording machines just like Nixon does, and what Connie hears is Nixon and Haig entering the OMB conference room to listen to the tape containing the conversation Nixon had had with his previous chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman (voiced by Jon Cryer), three days after the Watergate burglary, with Nixon and Haig unaware that their recording was itself being recorded. What Connie now has is a recording of those eighteen-and-a-half minutes before they had been erased. Explosive stuff, right?
Connie arranges to meet with New York Times reporter Paul Marrow (John Magaro) to share this scoop with him. Paul wants her to give him the tape, but she refuses, telling him that all OMB tapes are logged, and she must log the tape back in when she returns to work. Her plan is for them both to listen to the tape while he makes his notes. Reluctant to be identified as the source of the leak, Connie tells Paul that while he could win a Pulitzer Prize for this bombshell, she could wind up being indicted.
Unfortunately, after this tidy construction of the setup, buttressed by Fitzgerald's and Magano's quiet urgency captured in Mirvish's tight shots, "18 1/2" careens into mushrooming, haphazard non sequitur similar to a confusing, frustrating dream in which you can never complete your task or reach your destination.
Actually, Mirvish previews that from the start. Traveling to meet Paul in a small town on Chesapeake Bay, Connie's drive begins to seem surreal until you realize that she is arriving in her car that is parked on a ferry. Inside the restaurant, the waitress (Gina Kreiezmar) congratulates her for making him wait for her before she pre-empts his order by telling him she will bring him what Connie has ordered. Already the mood reeks of current indie-prod attitude, with Fitzgerald's clipped, acerbic assertiveness clearly a contemporary affectation, as is Magaro's shlubby passivity.
Needing somewhere to plug in the reel-to-reel tape player he brought with him, Paul suggests a nearby motel run by eyepatch-wearing Jack (Richard Kind). Is one-eyed Jack the wildcard in this budding game of three-card monte about to be played before your eyes? Who can tell? When Connie and Paul discover that his tape player is broken, they try to find another one. This brings them in contact with a group of wannabe revolutionaries hanging out at the shoreline as well as a middle-aged couple, Lena (Catherine Curtin) and Samuel (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who had previously invited Connie and Paul to dinner. Yes, they do have a reel-to-reel, which plays bossa nova constantly, but they'll lend it out only if Connie and Paul have dinner with them first.
This is where "18 1/2" becomes interminable, the part in the dream where you are mired and cannot escape---only now you cannot even wake yourself up because the dinner goes on and on. And on. And on. Yes, there is intrigue because Connie and Paul, having just met, are posing as newlyweds, leading to tense moments as the older couple's questioning begins to probe too uncomfortably.
However, the less said about what transpires after Connie and Paul return to their room to listen to the tape, the better because Mirvish, drained of all inspiration and desperate, resorts to snippets of sex and oodles of violence as the hoary, cliché trope that no one is really who they seem to be gets beaten to death in an eye-rolling finish you would expect from a straight-to-video horror flick.
Suffice to say that whatever secrets Nixon and his cohorts held that required erasure have gone safely to the grave with them because you're never going to find them out from Mirvish's story.
Actually, half-garbled shards of dialog and clearly legible intertitle cards before the closing credits suggest some chicanery involving Howard Hughes, the Nixon campaign and Nixon's close confidante and "fixer" Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, ITT, and Wonder Bread.
Yes, there are foundations for credibility lurking here, such as Hughes's 1957 loan to then-Vice President Nixon's brother Donald in exchange for favorable treatment for Trans World Airlines, in which Hughes owned the controlling interest. Or ITT's 1971 donation to the Republican National Committee in exchange for favorable treatment from Nixon's Justice Department in an antitrust case as well as ITT's involvement in the 1973 right-wing coup d'etat in Chile that the Nixon Administration had orchestrated. And ITT did acquire Continental Baking Company, maker of Wonder Bread, in 1968.
Thus, Mirvish closes with the suggestion of a conspiracy theory that, like so many conspiracy theories, has a ring of truth to it based on circumstantial evidence. But until a conspiracy theory is corroborated, it remains a hoax. Mirvish's "18 1/2" is a hoax, and it could have been a good one, a political-thriller black comedy. The problem is that Mirvish takes far too long to tell his joke, uses too much hand-waving, whisks around his one-eyed Jack wildcard too many times in his endless game of three-card monte designed only to fool you, before he gets to the punchline, which falls flat after all the protracted distractions that preceded it.
Even worse, Dan Mirvish gets the last laugh---at your expense. He has wasted your time making you watch his contrived, convoluted, indulgent narrative that amounts to nothing and tells you even less than that. All he has done is erase 88 minutes from your life. That's a gap you'll never fill again. Stick with 1999's "Dick," starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, which at least has a hilarious explanation for why there needed to be an 18 1/2-minute gap.
The slyest part of "18 1/2" comes if you read the ending cast credits closely when, glimpsed briefly as the two non-speaking revolutionaries, cinematographer Elle Schneider and assistant second director Joshua A. Friedman get into the act. Friedman is billed as "Fred," and Schneider is billed as "Velma." Had the rest of the "Scooby Gang"---Daphne, Scooby-Doo, and Shaggy---been listed, it would have made this "stunt casting" too obvious (though this "Velma" also wears glasses). That's right. Nixon might have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
Now do you believe that "18 1/2" is nothing but a hoax?
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
Background briefing: During the 1972 US elections, Nixon political operatives, known as the "plumbers" and funded in part by contributions to his re-election campaign, were caught burgling Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex in Washington, DC, in June 1972.
Investigations led by Democratic Senator Sam Ervin revealed Nixon's voice-activated tape-recording system in the White House. Ervin's attempts to subpoena those tape recordings met with resistance, with some of the tapes received having noticeable gaps in the conversations---including one tape, recorded three days after the Watergate burglary, whose gap lasted for eighteen-and-a-half minutes.
The proffered explanation was that Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's personal White House secretary fiercely loyal to him, "accidentally" erased the tape while answering the telephone, an act that required her to perform such implausible physical contortions that the media quickly and derisively dubbed them the "Rose Mary Stretch."
Once former FBI assistant director Mark Felt revealed himself in 2005 to be "Deep Throat," the anonymous Washington insider who advised reporter Bob Woodward during Watergate, the only real mystery left in the Watergate scandal was what could possibly have been erased from that tape with the 18 1/2-minute gap.
Don't count on Mirvish's movie to shed any light on that mystery, but at least he launches it with a feint toward juiciness that dries up all too quickly.
Connie Lashley (Willa Fitzgerald) works as a transcriber at the Office of Management and Budget, typing up recordings of OMB meetings held at the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. The conversations are so bland and mundane that she and co-worker Cheryl (Marija Abney) dub them "the only boring tapes in Washington." But as she begins to transcribe a tape of a very short meeting, she soon hears the voices of none other than Nixon (voiced by Bruce Campbell) and Chief of Staff Alexander Haig (voiced by Ted Raimi) on the OMB tape.
The OMB uses voice-activated recording machines just like Nixon does, and what Connie hears is Nixon and Haig entering the OMB conference room to listen to the tape containing the conversation Nixon had had with his previous chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman (voiced by Jon Cryer), three days after the Watergate burglary, with Nixon and Haig unaware that their recording was itself being recorded. What Connie now has is a recording of those eighteen-and-a-half minutes before they had been erased. Explosive stuff, right?
Connie arranges to meet with New York Times reporter Paul Marrow (John Magaro) to share this scoop with him. Paul wants her to give him the tape, but she refuses, telling him that all OMB tapes are logged, and she must log the tape back in when she returns to work. Her plan is for them both to listen to the tape while he makes his notes. Reluctant to be identified as the source of the leak, Connie tells Paul that while he could win a Pulitzer Prize for this bombshell, she could wind up being indicted.
Unfortunately, after this tidy construction of the setup, buttressed by Fitzgerald's and Magano's quiet urgency captured in Mirvish's tight shots, "18 1/2" careens into mushrooming, haphazard non sequitur similar to a confusing, frustrating dream in which you can never complete your task or reach your destination.
Actually, Mirvish previews that from the start. Traveling to meet Paul in a small town on Chesapeake Bay, Connie's drive begins to seem surreal until you realize that she is arriving in her car that is parked on a ferry. Inside the restaurant, the waitress (Gina Kreiezmar) congratulates her for making him wait for her before she pre-empts his order by telling him she will bring him what Connie has ordered. Already the mood reeks of current indie-prod attitude, with Fitzgerald's clipped, acerbic assertiveness clearly a contemporary affectation, as is Magaro's shlubby passivity.
Needing somewhere to plug in the reel-to-reel tape player he brought with him, Paul suggests a nearby motel run by eyepatch-wearing Jack (Richard Kind). Is one-eyed Jack the wildcard in this budding game of three-card monte about to be played before your eyes? Who can tell? When Connie and Paul discover that his tape player is broken, they try to find another one. This brings them in contact with a group of wannabe revolutionaries hanging out at the shoreline as well as a middle-aged couple, Lena (Catherine Curtin) and Samuel (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who had previously invited Connie and Paul to dinner. Yes, they do have a reel-to-reel, which plays bossa nova constantly, but they'll lend it out only if Connie and Paul have dinner with them first.
This is where "18 1/2" becomes interminable, the part in the dream where you are mired and cannot escape---only now you cannot even wake yourself up because the dinner goes on and on. And on. And on. Yes, there is intrigue because Connie and Paul, having just met, are posing as newlyweds, leading to tense moments as the older couple's questioning begins to probe too uncomfortably.
However, the less said about what transpires after Connie and Paul return to their room to listen to the tape, the better because Mirvish, drained of all inspiration and desperate, resorts to snippets of sex and oodles of violence as the hoary, cliché trope that no one is really who they seem to be gets beaten to death in an eye-rolling finish you would expect from a straight-to-video horror flick.
Suffice to say that whatever secrets Nixon and his cohorts held that required erasure have gone safely to the grave with them because you're never going to find them out from Mirvish's story.
Actually, half-garbled shards of dialog and clearly legible intertitle cards before the closing credits suggest some chicanery involving Howard Hughes, the Nixon campaign and Nixon's close confidante and "fixer" Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, ITT, and Wonder Bread.
Yes, there are foundations for credibility lurking here, such as Hughes's 1957 loan to then-Vice President Nixon's brother Donald in exchange for favorable treatment for Trans World Airlines, in which Hughes owned the controlling interest. Or ITT's 1971 donation to the Republican National Committee in exchange for favorable treatment from Nixon's Justice Department in an antitrust case as well as ITT's involvement in the 1973 right-wing coup d'etat in Chile that the Nixon Administration had orchestrated. And ITT did acquire Continental Baking Company, maker of Wonder Bread, in 1968.
Thus, Mirvish closes with the suggestion of a conspiracy theory that, like so many conspiracy theories, has a ring of truth to it based on circumstantial evidence. But until a conspiracy theory is corroborated, it remains a hoax. Mirvish's "18 1/2" is a hoax, and it could have been a good one, a political-thriller black comedy. The problem is that Mirvish takes far too long to tell his joke, uses too much hand-waving, whisks around his one-eyed Jack wildcard too many times in his endless game of three-card monte designed only to fool you, before he gets to the punchline, which falls flat after all the protracted distractions that preceded it.
Even worse, Dan Mirvish gets the last laugh---at your expense. He has wasted your time making you watch his contrived, convoluted, indulgent narrative that amounts to nothing and tells you even less than that. All he has done is erase 88 minutes from your life. That's a gap you'll never fill again. Stick with 1999's "Dick," starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, which at least has a hilarious explanation for why there needed to be an 18 1/2-minute gap.
The slyest part of "18 1/2" comes if you read the ending cast credits closely when, glimpsed briefly as the two non-speaking revolutionaries, cinematographer Elle Schneider and assistant second director Joshua A. Friedman get into the act. Friedman is billed as "Fred," and Schneider is billed as "Velma." Had the rest of the "Scooby Gang"---Daphne, Scooby-Doo, and Shaggy---been listed, it would have made this "stunt casting" too obvious (though this "Velma" also wears glasses). That's right. Nixon might have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
Now do you believe that "18 1/2" is nothing but a hoax?
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
An accidental recording of "THE" recording is created.
sudiniup2 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Interesting "what if" take on the 18 1/2 minutes missing from Nixon's Watergate tape.
Nixon and Al Haig have been recorded by a sound-activated taping system installed in the Oval Office. They are recorded as they listen to the complete, entire Watergate tapes. This is the premise of the movie.
An accidental recording of "THE" recording is created and no one knows it exists.
Connie, a White House transcriber, does her job and listens to this tape to transcribe, as she listens and types the contents of what she hears on the recording, she realizes she has the missing 18 1/2 minutes being recorded as Nixon and Al Haig listen to it and make comments about what they hear.
Connie calls a respected newspaper journalist and asks to meet with him so he can listen to the recording and write a story.
Many odd people become involved as the movie progresses and as the movie concludes, it's revealed some people are not who they claim to be and a huge conspiracy is revealed.
The way the movie unfolds, especially after watching, "White House Plumbers," "Gaslit," "All the Presidents Men," and knowing how corrupt many politicians and billionaires are, it's not impossible to suspend belief while watching 18 1/2 Minutes.
Nixon and Al Haig have been recorded by a sound-activated taping system installed in the Oval Office. They are recorded as they listen to the complete, entire Watergate tapes. This is the premise of the movie.
An accidental recording of "THE" recording is created and no one knows it exists.
Connie, a White House transcriber, does her job and listens to this tape to transcribe, as she listens and types the contents of what she hears on the recording, she realizes she has the missing 18 1/2 minutes being recorded as Nixon and Al Haig listen to it and make comments about what they hear.
Connie calls a respected newspaper journalist and asks to meet with him so he can listen to the recording and write a story.
Many odd people become involved as the movie progresses and as the movie concludes, it's revealed some people are not who they claim to be and a huge conspiracy is revealed.
The way the movie unfolds, especially after watching, "White House Plumbers," "Gaslit," "All the Presidents Men," and knowing how corrupt many politicians and billionaires are, it's not impossible to suspend belief while watching 18 1/2 Minutes.
You haven't seen Watergate like this before!
directortim201216 August 2022
I haven't enjoyed a Watergate film this much since "Dick!" Understand, 18 1/2 (A clever play on Fellini's 8 1/2 and the infamous 18 1/2 minute gap in the Nixon Watergate tapes) is not in out and out comedy. There's funny parts, but also suspenseful, thrilling aspects, as well as romance. But it is a fun ride, from beginning to end. Well written and directed, with a wonderful Robert Altman influence. And some great twists along the way. A terrific cast, with stellar young actors and a wonderful supporting turn by the always great Richard Kind. I'm ready to watch it again right now!
Sexual Tension That Builds Around a Missing Tape?
mike-104426 September 2022
Warning: Spoilers
It's been a while since a smart indie like 18 1/2 brought me to the edge of my seat. Set primarily in one location, "The Silver Springs" Motel, 18 1/2 is an original, well-crafted, political thriller laced with sexual tension that builds around the damn missing tape!
18 1/2 is an indie that takes re-watching and whether it receives the recognition it deserves amongst a sea of less crafted content, it is worthy and likely an indie classic for doing so much on so little, in one location.
Wonderfully performed and directed ... there is one Altman like long-take worth noting. As the camera wraps around the cottage windows, sexual tensions build between the lovely Connie, or is it Ruth (Willa Fitzgerald) and introspective Paul, or is it Archie (John Margo) that is so satisfying and well crafted. While some criticize the film's ending, for me it adds to its intentional absurd mirroring of political realities we encounter in more recent times.
True events or not, I now want to know WTF is on the missing Nixon tape!! Bravo to the writers and director.
Just brilliant.
18 1/2 is an indie that takes re-watching and whether it receives the recognition it deserves amongst a sea of less crafted content, it is worthy and likely an indie classic for doing so much on so little, in one location.
Wonderfully performed and directed ... there is one Altman like long-take worth noting. As the camera wraps around the cottage windows, sexual tensions build between the lovely Connie, or is it Ruth (Willa Fitzgerald) and introspective Paul, or is it Archie (John Margo) that is so satisfying and well crafted. While some criticize the film's ending, for me it adds to its intentional absurd mirroring of political realities we encounter in more recent times.
True events or not, I now want to know WTF is on the missing Nixon tape!! Bravo to the writers and director.
Just brilliant.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
