‘18½’ Review — Great performances guided by a strong sense of humor

A review of the historical comedy, in select theaters 5/27

Writer/director/Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish has assembled an exceptional cast for his new indie 18½, a movie that’s difficult to categorize. It’s part comedic farce, part paranoid conspiracy thriller, part what-if historical drama; it all adds up to a pleasant-enough little romp through a pivotal point in American history, when trust in our institutions collapsed. It’s… relevant, in other words.

The title refers to the 18½ minutes of missing time from the infamous Watergate tapes, which may or may not have captured Richard Nixon admitting to complicity in the break-in at the Watergate hotel. In real life, Rose Mary Woods took the fall for the gap in the recording, testifying that she may have inadvertently erased part of the tape while trying to answer a phone call.

18½, though, imagines a world where a second copy of those missing minutes existed, accidentally captured on a recording in an OMB office where Nixon may have listened to the tapes before handing them over to investigators. The tape is discovered by a transcriptionist named Connie (Willa Fitzgerald), and she contacts a reporter named Paul (John Magaro) in an attempt to get the truth out to the world.