...an earnest, somewhat self-congratulatory satire that hits the right mark but doesn't always elicit the commensurate laughter.
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It's always a relief to find a teenage picture that isn't mindless or gross. Of course, "Election" isn't really aimed at a teenage audience; its sophisticated wit and barbed satire are intended for adults looking back or looking on, and it's almost brutal in its skewering of certain character types we've all come to know and hate.
If the film has a fault, it's that it isn't always funny. The jokes are stinging, but they don't always draw laughter. In fact, some of the satire may just make you wince. It's all dark humor, black humor; humor about the politics of sex and popularity and fitting in and getting ahead. Above all, it's about the costs of winning and, equally, about the price of losing.
The last time we saw Matthew Broderick in a high school setting he was everybody's favorite con artist, Ferris Bueller. That was almost a decade and a half earlier. Now, Broderick is a history teacher, Jim McAllister, dedicated, hard working, earnest, caring, trusting, nurturing, an Educator of the Year several times over. But a touch of gray and a few more pounds can't disguise Ferris; he's forever the good guy at heart, trying what he can to bring a little joy into the world, make it a better place, and see that right prevails. Only "Election" is no "Day Off," and the real world isn't always full of happy endings.
He meets his match and more in the person of teenager Tracy Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon. Tracy is an overachieving go-getter who will stop at nothing to have her way. She is in to everything in school affairs--classes, grades, yearbook, newspaper, drama--even an affair with her math teacher. Then she sets her sights on becoming Student Council President, and McAllister can't stand it. He knows her for what she is, a grade-grubbing little snake, and when he sees she is running unopposed for the office, he encourages a totally sweet but none-too-bright athlete to run against her. The war is on.
Complications set in when the boy's lesbian sister enters the race, out of spite for her brother's having taken her girlfriend away. Things get further involved when McAllister has an aborted affair with a family friend, gets stung on the eye by a bee, tries to fix the election, and, well, things just escalate from there. In the end, goodness and virtue are thwarted and evil triumphs. Or so it seems.
You see, things are never so easy. Life is never so easy. Director and co-screenwriter Alexander Payne ("Citizen Ruth") avoids painting his mural in simple black and white; he prefers more realistic shades of gray. McAllister, for instance, isn't all he appears to be. He's got a stash of pornographic magazines and tapes hidden in his basement and secretly lusts after Tracy in his heart. Nor is Tracy all bad. She does everything with the best of intentions and sees herself as the embodiment of the American Dream.
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