troperville

tools

toys

SubpagesFilm
Main
Trivia
YMMV

main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

TV Tropes Org
random
Film: Dave
Dave is a 1993 film about Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline), who is hired for a night to replace President Bill Mitchell (also Kline) to cover up an affair. After the president unexpectedly suffers a stroke during sex with his mistress, Kovic becomes the "real" president and gets to work. See the The Other Wiki for the complete plot.

This movie provides examples of:

  • Adam Westing: Oliver Stone and Jay Leno are happy to have a laugh at their own expense.
  • Becoming the Mask: In terms of assuming his position as President. Fortunately, he doesn't become the Jerkass the real President Mitchell was, though his performance does redeem his character.
  • Big "YES!": The Chief of Staff Bob Alexander, when Dave admits in front of Congress that President Mitchell had been involved in a savings and loan scandal. He changes his tune moments later when Dave produces evidence that he was involved as well.
  • Black and White Morality: Political morality is pretty straightforward in this film. Dave, Ellen, and Nance are Good. Mitchell and Alexander are Evil. Alan Reed starts off Evil and turns Good. It's not any more complicated than that. Perhaps it doesn't need to be in a feel-good movie like this.
  • Bluff The Impostor: How the President's wife confirms Dave isn't who he says he is.
  • Body Double: Dave for President Mitchell.
  • Cassandra Truth: Oliver Stone gets wise to the ruse by comparing minute differences in the two men's facial features. Of course, being such a notorious Conspiracy Theorist, no one believes him.
  • Celebrity Impersonator: Dave was making a living impersonating the President even before he was picked up to do this "gig".
  • Character Title
  • Chewing the Scenery: "YES! Die, you SCUM!!!"
  • Collapsed Mid Speech: Dave invokes this. He gives a big speech to Congress, then stutters, stumbles and collapses just after the important confession part, supposedly with a stroke so they can switch the real president back in.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: At first Dave is very silly and doesn't appear to be very serious about being the fake president, just like his puppeteers want him to be. Then he starts actually working to help the nation, and becomes the better president.
  • Decoy Leader
  • Dysfunctional Marriage: This is the reason why the Manipulative Bastard dares to pull this off - the real president and his wife are so estranged that they barely talk anymore to each other. Unfortunately, no one counted on Dave being a much better match for Mrs. Mitchell than her husband...
  • Earpiece Conversation: Dave is coached through two conversations by his handlers and mistakes their stage instructions for his next line both times.
  • Emergency Impersonation: Pretty much the whole point of the film.
  • Happy Marriage Charade: The real President Mitchell and Ellen pretended to be loving couple for the cameras, while hating each other in private.
  • Heel Face Turn: Alan Reed.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: The Chief of Staff aims to manipulate Dave into following his own agenda, which will end with him being President. Unfortunately, he doesn't count on Dave both rebelling against his agenda and realizing that so far as everyone is concerned, Dave is the President.
    • Later, after being fired, he tries to impeach the President by revealing his role in a savings and loan fraud. Dave admits "his" involvement, but manages to procure evidence that Alexander was also involved. Everyone deserts Alexander.
  • Hollywood Tone Deaf: The First Lady, when pretending to be an impersonator.
  • I Am the Trope:
    Murray: You could get in so much trouble if they find out.
    Dave: With who?
    Murray: The government.
    Dave: I'm the government.
  • Identical Stranger: The whole plot is this. Justified, since Dave imitated the president a bunch, and that's how the government found him.
  • Jerkass: President Mitchell, the real one.
  • Large Ham: Frank Langella as the scheming Chief of Staff, but being a Capra-esque film, it comes with the territory, and Langella gleefully chews the scenery.
  • Leno Device: Leno appears to talk about the President's new attitude change, asking out loud if he's been overdosing on Happy Meals.
  • Meaningful Name: Mitchell's full name is William Harrison Mitchell, and the screenwriters have confirmed that he was named after William Henry Harrison. Who, by the way, was the first American President to die in office.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: When Nance is sworn in at the end of the film, he's referred to as the forty-fifth president, making Mitchell the forty-fourth president. Thus, extrapolating fictional presidencies from the time when the film was made, the story takes place in the year 2000 at the earliest and 2016 at the latest. Nevertheless, the political cameos firmly place it in The Nineties. Incidentally, Barack Obama is the real forty-fourth president.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bill Mitchell is generally believed to be a negative satire of George HW Bush, with shades of Bill Clinton.
  • Oh Crap: Bob Alexander when Dave produces evidence at the end that he was involved in the savings and loan scandal as well. He's basically reduced to staring at his television in horrified slack-jawed catatonia.
  • One Steve Limit: Averted when Dave meets the little boy David at the homeless shelter.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: The First Lady first gets suspicious of Dave when she catches him checking her legs out, since the real President stopped years ago.
  • Out with a Bang: Kind of. President Mitchell has a stroke and falls into a coma while having sex. He doesn't actually die until later.
  • Portmanteau
  • Power Fist: Arguably the telepresence robot arms with a 40 foot reach.
  • Scary Black Man / The Stoic: Dave's Secret Service bodyguard, Duane Stevensen.
  • Sexy Secretary: Laura Linney!
  • The Starscream: Bob Alexander, the Chief of Staff.
  • Twenty Fifth Amendment
  • Undying Loyalty: Stevensen pledges this to Dave, confessing "I'd have taken a bullet for you," just before Dave makes his exit. At the end of the film he's working for Dave's city council campaign.
  • Whole Plot Reference: The plot is essentially an adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda (a close physical double of a national leader stands in when the real leader is incapacitated, and ends up being both a better leader and a better person all round, falling for the leader's wife in the process), only modernized and stripped of most of the "swashbuckling adventure story" aspects. It also qualifies for a Prince and Pauper plot. An earlier Richard Dreyfuss movie, Moon over Parador, follows the same plot.
  • Your Costume Needs Work: Towards the First Lady, when she masquerades as a celebrity impersonator of herself.

The CrushFilms of the 1990sDazed And Confused

alternative title(s): Dave
random
TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy
17665
36