Election Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)May 7th, 1999
ELECTION
(Paramount)
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Mark Harelik, Molly Hagan, Delaney Driscoll. Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta.
Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, David Gale and Keith Samples. Director: Alexander Payne.
MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, sexual situations, drug use) Running Time: 101 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
This is how I know I'm dealing with a film of uncommon intelligence: ELECTION resists the tidy summations in which most films are all-too-eager to wrap themselves. Like many recent films, it is a comedy set in a high school, but it's more than just the latest high school comedy. It deals with a student body election, but it's not really _about_ a student body election. It's a film in which characters narrate much of the story, but it doesn't use that narration in a conventional way. Like director Alexander Payne's previous film CITIZEN RUTH -- if to a somewhat less successful degree -- ELECTION is a satirical scalpel that refuses to let you know exactly when or whom it's going to cut.
It's spring at Omaha, Nebraska's Carver High School as ELECTION begins, which means it's time for elections for the next year's student body officers. The prime candidate -- and apparently _only_ candidate -- for student body president is Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), an extracurricular machine who sees the office as her destiny. Seeing things a bit differently is Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), a civics teacher and student government advisor that Tracy rubs the wrong way. In an attempt to make the election less of a foregone conclusion, McAllister convinces injured football hero Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to mount a challenge, which in turn generates the "third party" candidacy of Paul's alienated younger sister Tammy.
It would have been easy enough for ELECTION to turn into a broad comedy about adolescent peer politics, and it _still_ would have been more insightful than most teen comedies. Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, working from Tom Perrotta's novel, have bigger targets in mind. They use the Carver High election as a microcosm not just of high school life, but of politics on a much grander scale. Tracy Flick's campaign casts her as a political cousin of our current president, seeking election as a "you really like me" validation rathern than out of a desire to serve; even her nomination speech parrots the naming-of-names, I-feel-your-pain personal touch. Tammy, meanwhile, rallies the disenfranchised minority behind the idea that nothing changes but the names in conventional governance. Even the ridiculous posters, filled with little more than sloganeering, seem disturbingly similar to national election campaigning. It's savvy, cynical, and very funny.
Even more effective is Payne's use of that old literary device the "unreliable narrator" as counterpoint to his direction. McAllister, Tracy, Paul and Tammy take turns explaining their take on the events of the film, each one mouthing words that don't quite match their his or her actions. McAllister describes his personal and professional contentment as he sifts through a trunk full of pornography; sexually-confused Tammy explains that "I'm not a lesbian, I'm attracted to the _person_. It's just that all the people I've been attracted to have been girls;" Tracy describes her mother's actions on her behalf in a way that shows she's being programmed for greatness. Only Paul, perhaps too dense to be duplicitous, seems pure of heart. As he did in CITIZEN RUTH, Payne explores the way we convince ourselves that our motivations are pure, even when we don't really understand what our motivations are.
If Payne stumbles anywhere, it's in his choice to focus much of the film's second half on McAllister's domestic troubles. Tammy's character in particular is abandoned by this choice, letting the school administration's reaction to her unconventional candidacy off the hook too easily. But ELECTION is too smart to be derailed by this problem, too clear-eyed in its study of good intentions muddled by psychological baggage. With surprising sympathy towards all his flawed characters, Alexander Payne creates a furiously funny film in which his surrealistic directing touches keep the audience off-guard. He understands that in a world where people can't even summarize themselves in a neat-and-tidy sentence, we can't expect to summarize the movies about them that way.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 electile dysfunctions: 8.
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