Category Archives: Politics

Movie Review: The Campaign

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“The Campaign” didn’t necessarily need to exist. Jay Roach could have just shot footage of Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis together in the same room, and I still would have bought the ticket. However, the fact that “The Campaign” gives them a purpose makes it all the better.

At this point, political satire has nailed down all of the main points pretty well: politicians will do anything they can to win, and they will also take any excuse to label their opponents as Communists. But the devil is truly in the details, and the challenge is in finding ways to make stale jokes seem fresh. The best example might be when Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) accidentally punches a baby in the face. The baby punching isn’t the funniest part; the fact that the scene is played out in slow-motion really seals the deal. And here I thought that showing the clip on every single talk show would make it less funny in the actual movie.

At the beginning of “The Campaign,” Ferrell’s Brady is going around telling everyone from auto workers to Filipino amusement park ride operators that they are the “backbone of America.” Political junkies will be surprised by how well versed writers Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell in American political jargon. This isn’t quite “The West Wing” penned by comedy writers (“Parks & Rec” and “Veep” are more in that league). It’s more like if “Step Brothers” focused on a bunch of Washington insiders. That is very high compliment.
I think this is my favorite performance that I have seen from Ferrell in quite a few years. He is in his element as a Ron Burgundy-type politician with less of a heart. Cam Brady is a congressman for a small district in North Carolina. His years in Washington have turned him into a corrupt womanizer. Despite a sex scandal involving a voicemail on the wrong person’s machine (to be far, who still uses an answering machine?), Brady runs totally unopposed.

In Washington, the Motch Brothers (which sounds an awful lot like Marx Brothers when said out loud), senior congressmen played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, look for a way to bring cheap, illegal Chinese labor to the Carolina district. Aykroyd plays a version of one of the men who made him homeless in “Trading Places.” How the tables have turned. The Motch Brothers’s plan is almost a cartoonishly evil plot. I could picture them coming up with this on Looney Tunes before getting blown up by some disguised dynamite.

The Motch Brothers decide their plan will succeed if they bring their own player into the race. They go with Marty Huggins (Galifianakis), who takes ‘inexplicable choice’ to a whole new level. Huggins, who is a variation of Galifianakis’s Seth Galifianakis, is the effeminate tourism director of Hammond. He knows many interesting facts about the town, such as the one regarding the time that Rosie Perez stopped in town because she needed to use the phone. They say people resemble their dogs, and Huggins is essentially a pug walking on its hind legs. His family, meanwhile, could have their own reality show. Galifianakis is a great comic actor because everything he does as Huggins perfectly fits the character right up to the way he runs, which can be better described as skipping with style.

“The Campaign” is a little like a political “My Fair Lady,” with Huggins learning how to walk, talk, and dress like a politician. Dylan McDermott gives a subtlety hysterical performance as Huggins’s campaign manager. He’s a man who often acts much more like a spy. Perhaps one of the funniest scenes in the movie is when he shows up in Cam Brady’s shower, seeing as he doesn’t even seem to open the curtain in order to get in.
Will Ferrell continues to amaze me in the sense that he always seems to star in the projects that he wants to star in. He seems to enjoy putting himself into “gross-out” stories with a very heavy social context. Even when he doesn’t write a movie, it seems as if he did. And now, I’m starting to feel the same way about everything Galifianakis does as well. After all, Galifianakis is a native of North Carolina. However, Ferrell isn’t actually a scumbag in real life.
“The Campaign” goes beyond the politics that push the plot forward. Roach allows a lot of the humor to come from the moments when the characters aren’t campaigning. In simplest terms, it’s about a lot of odd, funny characters doing odd and funny things. “The Campaign” may be a plot-oriented comedy, but something that stood out to me was that it was willing to take a break from itself in order to show the Huggins family dinner. And when one of his children starts confessing his darkest secrets, it appears that everyone goes off script. And for that it works all the better.
The living embodiment of Awkward Family Photos.
“The Campaign” obviously comes out during an election year, and it was definitely released at this time for a reason. It shows a sense of unabashed idealism that can only be found in a movie. However, that is the end. The means show a more bitter look at politicians. This time, there is no knight in shining armor. Everyone realizes that the only way to win is through dishonesty. Yet, despite all of Marty Huggins’s idiosyncrasies (to put it lightly), he becomes the movie’s hero because he is the innocent. Every comedy needs one. He is the only man in the room who actually wants to make good things happen. 
To me, “The Campaign” wasn’t as subtlety brilliant (there, I said it) as “Step Brothers.” And it definitely didn’t have all of the memorable one liners of “Anchorman.” And as far as political satires go, it doesn’t quite reach the top on a scale of one to “Election.” It doesn’t reinvent the wheel on political satirizing, but then again, I never should have assumed it would. It crams more laughs into 85 minutes than any other comedy this summer. And it wasn’t a sequel, prequel, remake, or comic book adaptation of any sort. 
Sometimes, a good comedy doesn’t have to tell a story that hasn’t been told, but rather make us laugh at jokes we’ve never heard. “The Campaign” may be flawed, and maybe it would have been  better with Adam McKay in the director’s chair, but I can say this: it certainly is pure. The political parties of the two candidates are mentioned only once and never again. Maybe that’s because campaigns are rarely about actual issues nowadays. Regardless, this is a comedy about the ridiculousness of American politics that anyone of any ideology can sit down and enjoy. That is, as long as you have a sick sense of humor.
If you liked this movie, you’ll also like: Anchorman, Step Brothers, Walk Hard, Zoolander, Trading Places

Movie Review: The Ides of March

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I remember when I first started getting interested in politics. I was a junior in high school, and Barack Obama and John McCain were running for president. For the first time ever, I actually felt invested in the idea that someone might become president and change things for the better. Then I waited a few years and realized that nothing changes.

“The Ides of March,” the fourth film directed by George Clooney, is the perfect film for all of us cynics out there. Some might be turned off by the film’s dark tone, but it is the touch of realism that Hollywood fairy tales about politics so desperately needed.
At the beginning, the optimist will feel like Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), the young and ambitious junior campaign manager for presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney). Meyers is highly admired and sought after for his skills. It may be less because it is talented and more because he is clueless.
Morris, an obvious allusion to our current president, runs on a campaign of hope and change. His speaking ability and intelligence seem too good to be true. No candidate is good without a loyal team behind them.
Things are going well for the Morris campaign as they make their way through the Ohio primary. Morris looks like the candidate to beat, and Meyers get more and more acclaim from his peers. But after Stephen is approached by the rival candidate’s campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) things go down hill. This, topped with the discovery of a shocking scandal, throws the whole campaign into chaos.
“The Ides of March” made me think back to a quote from one of cinema’s shadiest politicians, Harvey Dent, in which he claims, “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The dehumanizing process of politics has been touched upon in movies time and time again, but in “The Ides of March,” there is no white knight, only a bunch that are stuck in the gray areas of life. As a viewer, you grow to like every character, and then you grow to hate them. By the end, none of them even look like good guys or bad guys anymore. This is a tale of the most twisted morality possible.
While Morris is the film’s central character, his physical presence is sparse throughout. He is like this film’s Gatsby, as our view on him is shaped more by the perceptions of others than by his actual presence. And when we do see him, Clooney plays him more as a blank slate who can easily be swayed in either direction. His views are called idealistic for a reason. By the time a campaign ends and an election starts, a candidate is no longer a reflection of their views but rather of everything they need to win.
Despite the importance of the candidate, Gosling ends up stealing the show as the naive Stephen Meyers. Gosling has been getting better by the movie, and this role should earn him his second Oscar nomination. He has developed a talent for playing characters with a kind and almost innocent outer shell, but with very dangerous tendencies. Here, the danger he holds is in in the naivety of his actions, including his fling with an intern (Evan Rachel Wood). By the end, when he his own voice has been reduced by the endless political commentary running through his headphones, he has officially become a victim of politics. That final expression is stoic yet screaming in inescapable pain.
Watching “The Ides of March,” I was reminded of the recent, equally pessimistic films such as “Michael Clayton” and “The Ghost Writer.” Something that “The Ides of March” has is the ability to make the trivial thrilling. A scene in which Morris’s senior campaign manager (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) steps into a car is so thrilling even though the camera remains stationary. We know something bad is going to happen, but we are denied seeing what exactly it will be. Clooney can make a situation go on for longer than it should, and make us want to keep watching it. Much of the movie is like a ticking time bomb that takes its time to go off, just to mess with its victims.
Clooney shows improvement as a director and unlike many actor-directors, he is not just directing for good performances and writing, but rather for the movie as a whole. He really cares about the consequences of where a camera is placed. The lighting emphasizes shadows. One of the most memorable shots in the movie is of Gosling, in silhouette, standing in front of a giant American flag. Behind this flag, a symbol of freedom, what keeps this country free and democratic is a shadowy, corrupt underworld of lies and false intentions.
In trying to make the small things meaningful, the writing turns dull, political jargon into a fast-paced function of the thriller itself. In “The Ides of March,” ideas and meetings are more action-packed than shootouts and car chases.
Republicans may swoon over the movie’s treatment of the Democratic Party, while Democrats will balk. But the great part about this movie is that it is an allegory not on political beliefs but rather on political corruption. At face value, this is a movie about the disappointments of Barack Obama. Deeper down, Morris is a politician who is more like John Edwards; on the outside, he is a friend of the people but truthfully, he is just fending for himself.
The movie takes its title from the day in which Julius Caesar, who’s power was increasing, was assassinated at the heads of the members of the Roman Senate. This accurately describe the heated relationship between Morris and Meyers, as well as the morally hazy intentions of every character in the movie. Nowadays, few people ask the right questions about our political system. “The Ides of March” is provocative enough to do just that.