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Top Critics (19)
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Fresh (61)
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DVD (12)
Hilary Henkin and David Mamet's script is gleefully hyperbolic without ever straying from its political target.
Amusing as it is, Wag The Dog does what it purports to sat irize -- the bark is real but the teeth aren't.
The pacing is crisp, the dialogue quippy and fast, the tone arch but energetic.
A wicked smart satire on the interlocking worlds of politics and show business, Wag the Dog confirms every awful thought you've ever had about media manipulation and the gullibility of the American public.
When the film makes the leap from plausibly outrageous to pure satire, it slips, and the logic goes with it.
Swift, hilarious and impossible to resist.
'Wag the Dog,' a movie that's fun to see more than once, comes across as a bitingly funny satire of politics, the media and show business.
Entertaining, creepily resonant political comedy.
Smart political satire from director Barry Levinson.
Anyone who would be inherently interested in this kind of sendup is unlikely to be surprised by anything in this film -- overall it feels like a trifle, if an entertaining one.
Twisty and flat-out hilarious.
Feels tossed-off and casual in the best way.
Strong performances abound in the film.
I doubt it will age as well as Network, but it is close to that realm of brilliance.
Lazily assembled by director Levinson, it slides into a series of soft, extended skits on engineering a media war, not helped by several badly handled leaps in the story.
Beyond a couple of hilarious zingers, its impact feels smug and minor.
Brilliantly scripted and acted to the point where even Barry Levinson's typically uninspired direction doesn't matter.
Levinson has created a surprising quickie that satirically strikes out at our political system, the media (easy target) and the whole business of image versus reality.
It is fun when people with Hollywood clout decide to do something as fast and loose as this...
It's half a brilliant political satire, half a wacky outrageous comedy of errors. The first half works, the second half doesn't.
A film that, for every scene of genuine hilarity, all too often just lies there smirking at itself about how darn clever it is.
Very relevant not only for 1990s, but also for generations to come.
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