Wag the Dog

It reminded me more of another superior film: Ishtar.

Not rip off per se - but yes, similar.

I also thought that wag the dog was better, but this film wasn't bad and it was certainly different enough to have plenty of funny moments. I really liked the first half - in fact, I probably liked it more than wag the dog, but the second half was only OK and worse than wag the dog.

It's closer to a ripoff of the original Special Correspondents.

Not sure how far back in time we have to go to find the original moment when the public first believed the version of reality portrayed by the media. Most likely it would be as soon as a newspaper writer realized that the unvarnished truth rarely sells as many copies as a sensationalized version that is created in the writer's mind. The public's hunger for extreme stories is just as much to blame for making news more like a semi-scripted reality TV show. But we continue to enjoy every minute of the deception anyway, so tell us another story!