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
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.
