We’ve seen the Watergate scandal filtered through a myriad of lenses through the years, from the greatest journalism movie ever in “All the President’s Men” (1976) to the solid made-for-TV effort “The Final Days” (1989) to the wickedly funny satire “Dick” (1999) to the disappointingly flat “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House” (2017) to the recent Starz limited series “Gaslit.” Just when you thought we might have covered this dark chapter in American history from all angles, along comes the slyly subversive, occasionally loony and thoroughly entertaining “18 ½,” which is fictional and yet contains essential truths and clever insights throughout.
If you’re of a certain age or a student of American political history, you know that “18 ½” reference. When the Nixon White House tapes were unearthed, we learned the president’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, had inadvertently (we think) erased some 18 ½ minutes of a recording made on June 20, 1972. The conceit of director Dan Mirvish’s film has a stenographer named Connie (Willa Fitzgerald) working a low-profile gig at the Old Executive Office Building when she comes across a recording of Nixon (voiced by Bruce Campbell) and White House Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman (Jon Cryer) discussing the looming Watergate scandal while actually listening to portions of the supposedly erased 18 ½ minutes. Connie essentially has the missing tape!
