FilmSnobReviews

Title: Vice
Rating: R
Director: Adam McKay
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell
Runtime: 2hr 12min

What It Is: This political comedy-drama is centered on Vice President Dick Cheney (Bale), his family life, and his coming into power within the American government, utilizing a mysterious everyman narrator to tell his story.

What We Think: Vice is a nonetheless interesting package to talk about. Politics and Cheney himself aside, it attempted to upkeep an energetic fast pace, though lagged in some parts due to its being cheeky violating the show-don’t-tell rule. There were many points in the film in which I thought—“couldn’t we have just inferred this? The audience would’ve known/understood this without having to be told in writing.” Whether or not you argue certain choices were to the point of supporting the quirky and heavily sardonic tone, some of them could have been booted to save us from the over 2-hour runtime. Otherwise, the film did some other things through the visuals that I thought were sort of clever (namely two moments specifically). The performances were as convincing as they could be, though Bale is great as could be expected, Rockwell is amazing and hilarious as George Bush Jr. The special effects makeup was pretty good, though in two shots, the seams in Bale’s prosthetics were more noticeable and Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife barely aged in comparison to Cheney. Overall, this film stands as a shining example of movies sometimes being a little too meta and audience-winking for their own good, especially within the last between-credits scene around a joke about how trivial millennial and social media are. Note to writers—making a joke about annoying people saying “lit” is not funny. It leaves a bitter taste, especially being the literal last line we hear in the film.

Our Grade: C, A little inconsistent feeling and constantly skipping around to make some big ironic joke, Vice is entertaining enough to watch in order to get a bit of a larger perspective on the office of Dick Cheney, but not as sharp or quick as it could’ve been.