Lawless grunts through moonshine saga

Start with Boardwalk Empire. Move the story south to Virginia. Take away the dapper suits and sub in some drab clothes made of itchy burlap and tweed. Funnel the illegal booze from brown bottles to Mason jars. Finally, dumb down the witty dialogue until it is all monosyllables of grunted half-muted barks; think cavemen with cotton in their cheeks.

And voila, you have just made Lawless, a mediocre, but amusing, period piece about the perils of living in backwoods hamlets, where moonshinin’ is a way of life and a family tradition.

The film is about the Bondurant brothers, who operate an army of stills in the rural hills of Virginia during Prohibition in the 1920s. The story focuses most of its attention on Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf), the runt of the fiercely loyal and often pugnacious Bondurant clan. He’s given little responsibility because his brothers think he’s weak and vulnerable — and they’re right. Then there’s Howard (Jason Clarke), a menacing figure the movie forgets to mention or give speaking lines to. The leader is Forrest (Tom Hardy), a cold and calculating hillbilly with considerable patience and ruthlessness. I realize the term “hillbilly” is considered derogatory to some, a badge of honor for others. Forrest falls in the latter category.

The Bondurants run moonshine in and out of Virginia, which is all fine and dandy to the local police who often purchase their signature White Lightning by the caseload. When a slimy federal agent (Guy Pearce) turns up wanting a cut of the brothers’ action, it sets off a moonshine war that envelopes Forrest and his pig-headedness, and also Jack and his sibling rivalry.

There’s plenty more to discover in Lawless, though, including a Chicago dancer turned vittles-chef (Jessica Chastain), a preacher’s daughter who looks too young to be courted by even the youngest Bondurant, a Tommy-gun toting gangster (Gary Oldman) and loads of punishing and brutal violence. My guest at the screening watched between closed fingers.

Lawless is filmed in dull browns and grays, giving the film an earthy, organic quality, as if the weeds are going to grow up over these characters if they sit still too long, which is an interesting dynamic considering these characters mosey about at their own pace. The movie was shot in Georgia and it benefits from some interesting locations, including a brewing shack that seems to have been overtaken by trees and vines. The cars are also a nice touch, including a spiffy V8 that Jack earns from his hard-fought alcohol sales.

This gritty look, along with the exotic backwoods locations and those ratty clothes, are nothing, though, compared to the vocal inflections and accents of the characters. They speak in broken grunts and throaty exhales. (It’s all in English, but I was secretly wishing for subtitles like that horrendous TV show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.) It was hard to understand, but the raspy backwoods dialects were impressive and they give the film a distinct brand of authenticity. Hardy’s voice is especially good. Most audiences will still have Hardy’s impeccably polite Victorian accent stuck in their heads from The Dark Knight Rises, and here he is doing a whole new routine with equally impressive results.

The movie is really a fiend for little details like that. The shacks feel lived in, the copper stills don’t just look hot but feel hot, the language evokes generations of rural living, the clothing is worn and scrappy — these are things that transport us into the world of the film. Notice the federal agent and all his small details: the immaculate leather gloves, the haircut with a center part made of an inch of baldness, the way the other characters smell perfume on him. This man is a foreigner to them, as much as they are foreigners to him, and this isolates his rage and hatred.

I liked the look and feel of Lawless, but I did not much care for the story. I was never sure who the star was, LaBeouf or Hardy. Both of their characters are gifted with the Bondurant curse of stubbornness, which never allows for much growth within the plot. Hardy chews on the scenes the way he’s supposed to, but he’s never given much to do. Then LaBeouf seems to hijack the plot midway through as the film changes from a gothic moonshine saga — think William Faulkner writing an existential Al Capone — to wham-bam action movie with chase sequences, fistfights and music montages. LaBeouf’s Jack spends much of the movie wanting to be his brothers, both ruthless savages. He begins the film as an irresponsible kid and ends it as an irresponsible kid who can now kill without guilt. What kind of story is that?

The director is Australian John Hillcoat, whose last two films — The Proposition and The Road, both marvelous — benefited with small casts and more precise narratives. Lawless has a large cast and, at times, it seems to sag under the weight of all its characters. Hillcoat often collaborates with musician Nick Cave, who wrote the script here. Cave’s story — based on Matt Bondurant’s book The Wettest County in the World — has a lot of nuance and is sprinkled with gloomy humor. I liked the dialogue, and the actors performing it, but I wanted the story to be tighter and more in control of the narrative. It’s not a bad movie, though it is occasionally slow as it meanders around with nothing to do.

Now, I mentioned HBO’s Boardwalk Empire up top. It is a similar story told in a similar way. Comparing a movie like Lawless to a show like Empire might not be fair, but after seeing Lawless all I wanted to do was watch a better version of the movie but on television. 

Premium Rush pulls out all the brakes, literally

Premium Rush is completely likeable. And also completely forgettable. Watch it and by the time you’re pulling out of the parking lot you’ll be thinking, “What movie did we see?”

With any other picture this might be a strong reason to avoid it, but here with the bike-themed Premium Rush, an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride on two wheels, that kind of comment is more a term of endearment. Yes, it’s disposable and forgettable, but aren’t summer movies supposed to be?

I have a soft spot in my heart for gutsy little thrillers like Premium Rush. It’s completely implausible and preposterous, but the characters seemed invested so I can suspend disbelief if only for them. Raiders of the Lost Ark tapped into this kind of anything-goes, fly-by-wire spirit, and here it is to a certain degree in the best bike movie since Quicksilver in 1986.

In Manhattan, bike messengers dart through the streets on rag-tag bikes called fixies. These are fixed-gear bikes with no brakes, and being able to maneuver on them around deliver trucks, cabs and other traffic perils is treated like performance art (or suicide) by their die-hard true believers. The messengers — these bohemian spirits tattooed and pierced from head to toe — wear heavy-duty (and thief-proof) bike chains around their waists like belts giving them an intimidating edge. If the Road Warrior rode a Huffy, this is what he’d look like.

Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a former law student who couldn’t bear to wear a suit to work, so he becomes a bike messenger, naturally. His last package of the day is an envelope that comes with plenty of trouble that Wilee must avoid at all costs as he races from Harlem to Chinatown in 90 minutes or less. Much of the trouble finds him in the form of bona-fide whacko Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon), whose life depends on recovering the hot envelope before it’s delivered.

Premium Rush, which nails the speed and exhilaration of riding through congested New York City traffic, has all the expected thrills and close-calls, including many many chases on bikes. It’s not as taut as it could be with several superfluous segments including a race in Central Park, but it gets the job done with some wild stunts, a likeable hero, an overcooked villain, a resilient female character and all of Manhattan to play in. You will not adore every pore of Premium Rush, but you will admire its tenacity and pluck. You will not regret the price of the ticket.

Gordon-Levitt, a consummate professional at everything he does, is a lot of fun to watch. He plays a twentysomething everyman like a champ even though he’s now 31. He must have had a stunt double for many of these in-traffic bike stunts, but we often see him peddling away like a madman. At one point I’m pretty sure I could hear his calves screaming in the soundtrack. He’s joined by the always-interesting Dania Ramirez, who you will fondly remember as Blanca, A.J.’s Puerto Rican girlfriend on The Sopranos. Michael Shannon, who plays nutty so well I’m starting to worry for his sanity, rounds out the rest of the small cast rather nicely.

Premium Rush is directed impressively by screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds). What could have been a by-the-numbers action thriller is turned into something special with some of Koepp’s tricks. In one nifty effect, we peek inside Wilee’s brain as he comes to dangerous intersections. The camera evaluates bike routes as we watch hypothetical versions of Wilee follow Family Circus-style arrows on the ground until he can determine the best course of action, be it over the trash can and around the car, or under the trailer and then over the loading ramp. Some of these imagined scenarios end with him getting crushed by trucks, flipped by open car doors and impaled on light poles. All those years working with Spielberg, De Palma, Raimi and Fincher has made Koepp a clever visual storyteller.

Koepp also weaves cell phone technology, digital maps and what must be a miniature of Manhattan into elaborate transition sequences so the audience knows where the characters are in relation to each other and the ultimate goal in Chinatown. This effect helps move the film along even as it wanders back and forth in time to reveal why the envelope is so important and why Bobby Monday is having such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I also liked how there was very little gunplay. For a movie to retain audience attention in this film era there must be a shoot-out in the breakfast nook before the main character changes out of his robe and gulps down his Cheerios. I’m happy to report that only a single bullet was fired in the whole movie.

So, I’ve gushed about Premium Rush. Technically, it’s a stellar film. It’s just instantly forgettable. The mood is very light and the action is low-key compared to a movie like The Avengers, which didn’t just ride its bike down Fifth Avenue but carved the street out of the soil from Central Park to Greenwich Village. I prefer milder action to world-ending calamity, but Premium Rush didn’t take itself as serious as it should. It could have ramped up the thrills and terror just a little more.

Besides, ramps are great set decorations in a movie about bikes and their daredevil riders.

My two favorite NYC bike videos

I have bikes on the brain this morning after yesterday's screening of Premium Rush. Here are my two favorite New York City bike videos. 

ParaNorman Activity

Stop-motion is almost as old the cinema itself, yet here I am again fascinated at a bunch of moving dolls and the convincing world created around them.

In April it was Pirates! Band of Misfits, a riotous family comedy and one of my favorite pictures of the year, and here comes ParaNorman, a stop-motion horror-comedy from the team at Laika Entertainment, the gloomy dreamers who gave us Coraline several years back.

Coraline was dark and wonderful, but I think Laika — the Pixar of stop-motion? — has topped themselves with ParaNorman, a tale of a young boy who can see ghosts, which is a great skill to have when zombies start clawing out of graves.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the runty weakling at his school. His reputation of spacing out and talking to thin air do not help his popularity. His one friend, Neil, a plumpy kid filled with optimism, is picked on just as much, let him count the ways: "I'm fat. I have a lunchbox with a kitten on it. I sweat when I walk too fast. I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome." These poor kids.

Norman's kooky uncle with dreadlocks in his beard shows up one day to bestow on Norman a task he can no longer fulfill. Every year Norman must go to a witch's grave and read a passage or else … the uncle doesn't make it very far until his heart fails him. That's not a spoiler, though, since being dead doesn't get you removed from the movie. It's up to Norman to stop the curse, but wouldn't you know it, he fails the first day, which sets into motion a zombie apocalypse.

The mood may sound ghastly, with fleshy zombies grunting for "braaaaaiiinnssss" and demonic witches and ghosts who spill out of toilets, but this is all shown as silly light-hearted comedy. Norman for instance, is a horror-film junkie whose room is festooned with memorabilia from hackers, slashers and other fright-fest staples. It's all very whimsical, never threatening or intense. A different film, maybe one with Tim Burton directing, might have written him with more angst and creepier, but here Norman is a lovable, albeit eccentric, kid. And his hair sticks straight up, like a Lincoln top hat without the brim.

The movie begins with Norman, but as the zombies appear and slowly start to disassemble the town, Norman enlists his sister, friend Neil, Neil's buffed-out older brother and the school bully, an oafish twerp named Alvin — or is Alven, Allven or Alvun? This dim bulb isn't sure of the spelling of his own name. I liked Alvin. At one point we see him doing a B-boy street routine that is epic in its awfulness. I have not yet tired of the formula of Goonies, E.T. and Super 8, where a bunch of plucky kids band together to bounce through an adventure story. The movie joins a fun tradition of adventurous young people.

ParaNorman has many splendid scenes involving chasing zombies, spectral hallucinations and that big first reveal of all of Norman's ghostly buddies, including a bird strangled with six-pack plastic rings, a mangled piece of roadkill and a wiseguy wearing cement boots. My favorite parts, though, were the comedy bits, including one scene involving a potential zombie victim who can't decide if he should flee in terror or wait for a bag of Greasy Pieces chips to cycle through the vending machine in front of him. In another scene, Norman can't remove a book from the clutches of a dead man's hands. Watch as he bangs, smashes and contorts the body around to wrangle the book free. It may be slapstick, but it's very sharp and the timing is perfect.

I also admired the bizarre design of the world and the characters. Notice how nothing in the movie's universe is squared up or straight. Door frames, vending machines, graveyard headstones, cars … everything is made using odd angles and lines that wander. I especially liked Norman's dad's wood-paneled station wagon, which deserves to go down in history alongside the Griswold's Family Sports Truckster. The human designs are even stranger with ears that stick out, faces that seem almost deformed and waists that don't match body styles. Norman's sister is especially odd, with a tiny top but with wide lower half (I think they call these birthing hips). All of it together gives the film an interesting look and a bizarre visual appeal.

ParaNorman is a fantastically enjoyable movie, but think twice before you bring your very little ones. Much of the humor is not very friendly for the Playskool crowd. In the first five minutes someone asks Norman what he's watching on television. "Sex and violence," he replies back. Other jokes include adult video stores, freeze-framing aerobics videos, male boobs and then, of course, flesh-rotted dead bodies and a rather terrifying grand finale with a witch made of yellow electricity.

I've said it before in other reviews and I'll say it again: it may be a children's movie but I'll take an endlessly creative stop-motion movie like ParaNorman over any gunfight-fistfight-mayhem-inducing action movie any day of the week. This is an entirely unique movie made with love and commitment by talented movie artisans. If you would rather see more remakes, sequels, prequels and reboots of mindless action films, then Hollywood has you covered.

But don't forget about movies like this that aspire to be something different instead of more of the same.

As with all stop-motion animated films, I'm posting all the photos. Click the jump to see more.

ParaNorman screening gone haywire

Notice something off about the photo above? You may be thinking, "Sure, something doesn't look right." And AMC Theatres will be thinking, "Gee, looks great to me."

Who's right? Well not the people with eyeballs in their skulls, I'll tell you that much.

There was an earlier Phoenix screening of the stop-motion animated film ParaNorman. I think it was Tuesday, but it was in the morning, a difficult time to get out of the office to make a drive to Downtown Phoenix or further to watch a movie. So I missed it and instead chose to go to a Thursday night press screening. No, my review wouldn't make it in our Friday paper, but I already had my Sparkle review running so I figured we'd hold ParaNorman for my Tuesday Volume page. Besides, holding it for Volume would mean we get to have some fun with the design and you know how I love stop-motion.

The screening was at the AMC Arizona Center, right next door to the Arizona Republic, where the still-wet tears of dismissed journalists were glistening on desktops or perhaps on spiral-bound copies of the AP Style Guide (2008 edition). The Republic has nothing to do with this story, I just thought I'd mention how journalism is a lost art in Arizona.

Anyway, I've always loved AMC's screen presentation. They're much better than Harkins, whose projectionists thread films wearing catcher's mitts. (They've improved slightly now that they've gone all digital.) This night, though, AMC was off their game big time. First of all, the movie started late. Then came the screening stalkers, the regulars who stare at the press section and plead with the studio representatives to let them sit in those open special seats in the area they think is reserved for "VIPs." Ha, me a VIP?!?! Meanwhile their seats are just as good, if not better. And then when some radio station intern gives away a T-shirt they claw the faces off newborn babies in an attempt to get the lamest shirt on the planet. (My favorite part is when they wear the shirt to the next screening.)

These screening groupies that make up a tiny fraction of any press screening weren't the theater's fault, but I feel it's worth mentioning that if you ever get a free movie just smile to yourself and repeat the sentence, "I won't complain because I received something free today." And eyes front.

Finally, the movie starts and it's clear something is not right. ParaNorman looks like an old-fashioned 3D movie, the kind with the offset red and blue image. There are two images up there ... now three ... now four. Oh, and the blurriness! I felt drunk as the image galloped to and fro from within varying stages of awful focus. It seemed to get blurrier whenever the 3D effect was more intense. As zombies, or maybe they were RVs with extended awnings — the blurriness made it difficult to tell — descended on the screen it was obvious something was severely wrong a whopping two minutes into ParaNorman, a movie I was rather excited to see.

I shifted my 3D glasses on my face. At one point I even flipped the glasses around, as if there was some MacGyver polarization trick that only I (and MacGyver) knew about. A colleague next to me rumbled in his seat. We exchanged glances, "It's not just me that's experiencing this distorted picture, right?" Soon audience members started yelling, "FOCUS!!!! IT'S OUT OF FOCUS!!!!" One woman stood up and said, "Raise your hand if you think this is messed up?" Hands shot up all around the theater.

Surely someone would come in and address this issue, right? Or maybe they would just go upstairs and fix the problem, and the film would be magically fixed without any formal apology or boring speech from some theater manager. Nope. Nothing happened. The movie just kept playing and playing. And the picture never changed. I think it got worse. At one point I took the 3D glasses off so I could watch the movie better. (And just like Roger Ebert always says, the picture was brighter. I knew this already, but I always think of Roger when I tilt the 3D glasses up to peer at the 3D image all naked and exposed.)

This went on for maybe 10 more minutes and by then I had enough. I hopped over the railing and out I went; "I'll pay and see it tomorrow on opening day" is what I told myself. Out in the hallway, at the mouth of the theater, an AMC manager was opening new boxes of 3D glasses. "It's the glasses," someone said. I snagged a new pair and went back inside. Nope. Same problem. But this didn't stop others from wandering out into the hallway to try a new pair.

I started heading for the door, the ones that lead out into the non-blurry world, but the studio rep told me to hang tight because she was going to kick ass and set things straight. After waiting in the hallway for about five minutes, she stepped off an elevator in defeat. The manager was not far behind her shrugging his shoulders. "Everything is set up correctly, so I don't know what the problem is," I heard him say.

This whole time the movie is running. It was at this moment an image flashed in my head: a pilot and co-pilot talking about a problem on an airplane while it flies at cruising altitude. They're discussing the problem from the very back of the plane as the cockpit sits empty, the flight sticks bobbing up and down lightly as the plane blindly flies itself. Then another image hit me: an inflatable projectionist like the autopilot from Airplane!

While I waited on a bench in the hallway trying to decide if they were going to start the movie again or not, several people came out complaining, but most people stayed put and watched a crappy version of a what might have been a spectacular movie. At least they took my imagined advice: "I won't complain because I received something free today."

More than a half hour into the movie, I was heading for my car. I couldn't watch a movie presented in that way, especially one I was supposed to be reviewing. I can imagine the review: "From what I could see through the blurry picture, ParaNorman was great." It was shocking to me that the movie wasn't stopped. There were hundreds of people in that auditorium, and dozens of Phoenix critics. People leaving a movie unhappy — be it from a mediocre script, poor film presentation or just a farting customer (it's happened!) — is never a good marketing device. Apple has some loyal fans, but I never once heard of Steve Jobs showing off a smashed iPhone at an Apple event. You just don't let people walk away with a bad taste in their mouth. It's bad for business.

And then here was AMC shrugging its shoulders and twirling a finger in its ear, "Duh, I reckon they'll just have to watch it this way." 

Cast turns cliche-ridden film into sparkles

Sparkle needs a polish. Nothing intense. Just some buffing here and there so, you know, it glitters more. Yep, that's sparkle and glitter in the same paragraph; I hope you brought your sunglasses.

Just to clarify, though, this is a review of Sparkle, with Glendale's American Idol winner Jordin Sparks. Glitter is that atrocious and very similar Mariah Carey movie from 2001, the one people point at and laugh and then mutter to themselves, "Oh, Mariah, pretending to act, how adorable." You'll be forgiven if you mix them up; everyone will.

Back to Sparkle: it pleasantly surprised me. Not so much because of the mediocre story, constructed from hand-sanded planks of solid cliché, but because it was so wonderfully cast. I couldn't tell you the last time I loathed a story but loved the cast as much as I have with Sparkle. And I'm not just saying that to avoid criticizing the late Whitney Houston and her famous last role. Everyone just clicks together. And most importantly, I cared for these characters.

Sparkle (Sparks) is a talented 19-year-old songwriter who lives with her reformed alcoholic mother in Detroit during the Motown post-heyday of 1968. The movie reminds us what year it is by showing us Martin Luther King Jr. on television sets, but says absolutely nothing of racial relations, the civil rights movement or that whites and blacks were having major disagreements about equality. There is one line about the 1967 Detroit riots, but then it's abandoned. But this is a music movie, not a message movie, so don't think about history here other than a backdrop for classic cars, vintage threads and female singing groups.

With her two sisters, Dolores (Tika Sumpter) and Sister (Carmen Ejogo), Sparkle sneaks out of Mother's house to sing at bouncing Detroit nightclubs. The group, known as Sister and the Sisters, weaves pop and soul into that classic Motown sound and, sure enough, they're a hit. (And what female group wouldn't be a hit when they perform in nightgowns so short that it's a good thing the camera films from high angles?) Mother (Houston) is kept in the dark until she has to see all her daughters, one of them in a see-through dress, on TV opening for Aretha Franklin.

As soon as fame hits the group, Sister starts making all the typical blunders, the kind of cautionary mistakes that inspire audiences to look around the screen for that little Lifetime logo, maybe down in the corner somewhere. She hangs out with abusive men, starts snorting cocaine, shooting heroin and showing up bruised and high to band meetings. The movie paints these episodes in broad and obvious strokes, as if Sparkle is a teen sitcom, perhaps that episode of Saved By the Bell, the one where the Zack Attack lets drugs and alcohol come between "friends forever."

Sparkle lacks all story subtlety. One day Sister is fine and the next she's packing viles of cocaine in her purse. There's no build-up to this point, no erosion of her personal values, no contemplation as she edges closer to peril. One day she's fine, the next she's a cocaine addict holed up in broom closets. She also marries Satin (Mike Epps), who might be the most spectacularly evil villain since Daniel Day-Lewis beat that preacher with a bowling pin. Sister and Satin are fill-ins for Ike and Tina, or maybe Whitney and Bobby, and how bad they were together. It was brave of Houston to be in and produce Sparkle considering it must be based, in part, on her own trauma. I wish the film would have shown Sister's downfall in a more meaningful way, though, because here she has no motivation to descend into the abyss of drugs other than to hit stale plot points to further the by-the-numbers story.

Where Sparkle works and works well is with its terrific little ensemble of actors. Sparks is not a trained actress, but she was believable and I found myself cheering her on as she confronts her controlling mother and wrangles her fading sister. She wears this slinky red dress at the end that, good golly, is very flattering. Ejogo, as Sister, is remarkable even when the script gives her little to work with. Epps is ruthless and mean, and he played it so well I was struggling to remember what Epps was like in real life. Derek Luke, another fine actor, plays the group's manager and he doesn't hit all the usual music-manager beats that a lesser movie would hit.

Even the small characters are interesting, including a record executive played by Curtis Armstrong, who I will always remember as Booger from the Nerds movies. I also enjoyed a preacher who blesses everyone's digestive systems during the dinner blessing. My favorite character, though, is a minor one played by Omari Hardwicke. He plays Levi, a kind and gentle friend of the manager who puts up with more abuse than he deserves. The movie may be predictable on every level, but I was not ready for this character and his modest proposal in a diner.

Then there's Houston. Her role is small, but it always looms over the proceedings. Her voice is raspy and scratchy, but she looks spectacular. Houston is not the greatest actress and I think she knew that. She gets by, though. Her Mother character only sings once, but watching it will make you wish she had a Sparkle in her life to pull her out of the muck she routinely found herself in. Sadly, her song is not as energetic or as good as all the other music, some of which is very catchy, but it's one of her last performances so I think her fans will be grateful.

Sparkle is not the greatest movie of its genre — try Dreamgirls or Hustle & Flow — but it does get the job done. Well, let me clarify: the actors, including the late Whitney Houston, get the job done. 

ParaNorman set photos; review to come soon

For as long as I post on this page I will give extra space to stop-motion animation. I’m just glad the studio-provided press packages don’t contain hundreds of photos, because I wouldn’t be able to resist running them all for every stop-motion movie that comes my way.

My ParaNorman review will be posted tomorrow, but in the meantime here are some behind-the-scenes photos from the set. They’re not as cool as the Pirates! photos from a couple months back, but they’re good.

Make sure to check back for the review with even more photos.

Tea Party politics brutalized in The Campaign

Two Republicans are fighting for a congressional seat in The Campaign. At a hunting event, one of the candidates shoots the other point blank in the leg with a high-powered rifle. There are many witnesses. At the end of the day the shooter gets a huge bump in the polls because, after all, he supports the Second Amendment.

There are two kinds of satire. The first is the subtle and careful variety, represented by pictures such as Election or Swing Vote, movies that lampooned the savagery of politics without stepping into outright parody.

The other is less subtle and more scorched earth. Think South Park at its nuttiest. That's where The Campaign finds itself: curling its hairy little toes over the edge of madness and then plunging off.

Man oh man, what a romp. It's like the unhinged super-ego of Steven Colbert turned loose on a movie set. Republicans be warned: this is not a kind portrayal. Of course, now's where hardcore Republicans say something like, "The liberal Hollywood slanders us again." Maybe, but there's enough truth in The Campaign to make Ronald Reagan weep.

In a North Carolina congressional district, incumbent Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is ready to lock in his third term with an unopposed slam dunk. Brady, with a Southern drawl that sounds like Bill Clinton mixed with Forrest Gump, wants to import products that were made in a Chinese sweatshop town called Mare-ika, that way the products can read "Made in America." The wealthy and bored Motch Brothers would rather "insource" China to North Carolina, so they rush to get their own candidate in the race to upset Brady.

The Motch Brothers are played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow and they're supposed to represent the billionaire industrialists the Koch Brothers, who have been trying to sway elections for years. The brothers choose effeminate oddball Marty Huggins to run against the steely-cold Brady, who immediately attacks Huggins for having Chinese pugs or as he calls them "commie dogs." Huggins, who can't even trash talk — "You smell like a balloon full of toots" — is a wimp, but he has morals … and lots of sweater vests. Brady, meanwhile is ruthless. At one point he links Huggins to al-Qaeda because he has a mustache that looks like Saddam's. 

Both candidates are running on the same platform: "America. Jesus. Freedom." Brady ends all his sentences with a confident "support our troops" jingle, and no matter what preceded it — including the Lord's Prayer with a misquoted line about helicopters and thighs — the crowds roar blindly. Brady has a segment during the opening credits where he separately tells blue-collar workers, hunters and teachers that they're the backbone of America. He says a version of this at every event, and the scene ends at a fair where he tells a small crowd: "Filipino tilt-a-whirl operators are this nation's backbone." Pandering to voters is his brutal specialty.

Marty Huggins, though, seems incorruptible, which is why the film gets very interesting when he's corrupted so violently. At one point Huggins befriends his opponent's children and gets one of them to call him dad and, of course, all of this is run in a guerilla campaign ad. Comedian Zach Galifianakis plays Marty, who's wound too tight for politics. Before his candidacy starts he asks his two children if they have any confessions to make, because it might come out in the debates. Watch as Marty seethes at each new sordid story from his demented little spawn. "OK, maybe that's enough stories for one evening," he finally says.

Although a political movie, the film's humor is quite vile with many over-the-top sex-related jokes. Some of the other gags are duds, including an unfortunate one about an Asian maid who is forced to speak like a black slave. Many are quite funny. I especially enjoyed an episode that the movie titles Baby-Punch-Gate; use your imagination. Mostly, though, the movie just lampoons GOP politics. Notice how the American flag pins get bigger and bigger. Remember when Fox News would endlessly debate this? Well, at the end of The Campaign the flag pins are as big as tennis balls, which someone on Fox & Friends would still have the gall to call unpatriotic or un-American.

I can't help but think that The Campaign would have played much better during the Republican presidential primary, back when Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum would have considered the jokes in this movie actual political tactics. Mitt Romney would have never posed with M-16s in each hand with jets and bald eagles flying over his shoulder, but all bets were off on the other yahoos. And therein lies The Campaign's real target: the Tea Party. One must only squint at Ferrell and Galifianakis to see Tea Party politics at work.

The Campaign has many political entities to ridicule, but I think it lets the candidates themselves off the hook and instead throws much of the blame on the Motch/Koch Brothers. They're deserving of such public shame for sure, but so are the candidates who co-opt their principles with corporate money.

If you've noticed I haven't talked at all about Democrats. There are none in the movie. Does that mean the film is biased? Well, sure it does, but judging by that last raucous Republican primary, it's biased toward reality.

If this bias thing is worrying you, then point me to a movie that lampoons the Democratic Party's political machine. I'll review that fairly. Something tells me, though, it won't be as funny.