<em>Vice</em> Is a Goofy and Pedantic Dick Cheney Biopic<em> </em>

My problems with Vice, the writer-director Adam McKay’s zany yet hectoring biopic of Dick Cheney, begin with its title. It might be apt for a movie about Vice Media, for instance. (There would appear to be plenty to work with.) Or perhaps for a film about policing Times Square in the 1970s and ’80s. But as much as the film tries to persuade us otherwise, no one refers to the vice president of the United States as “vice.” Alas, Veep was already taken, and likewise Dick. “Cheney” was presumably too dull, and “VPOTUS” doesn’t track at all. Thus, the oddly off-key Vice.

But astute readers may already have gleaned that my deeper complaint centers on the whole “zany yet hectoring”