Swing Vote: An Election-Themed ‘Comedy’
The only thing funny about the new film starring Kevin Costner is that it wants you to believe all politicians are really swell people.
Swing Vote is a film by Joshua Michael Stern that is launched by a zany Billy Wilder-esque idea: what if the presidential election came down to the vote of one drunken loser living in a trailer in Texico, New Mexico? My fellow Americans, I know the films of Billy Wilder. Joshua Michael Stern, you are no Billy Wilder.
Swing Vote, which I was hoping would be one of the year’s worst films, isn’t; there are about three laughs in it, meaning it rates above at least a dozen comedies I’ve seen in 2008. For about 15 minutes in the middle, when the Republican president (Kelsey Grammer) and the Democratic candidate (Dennis Hopper) start throwing all of their principles to the piranhas in order to win over the vote of the loutish unemployed single dad Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), the movie actually shows signs of life. Based on offhand comments Bud makes in interviews during a ten-day period when he is thinking about how he should vote, the Republican runs a rainbow-flag TV commercial sending a great big fabulous wet kiss at gay marriage, and the Democrat runs one commercial showing the country being overrun by Mexicans and another in which little kids shown at a playground disappear in puffs of smoke to symbolize the ills of abortion.
But Billy Wilder would have had enough ideas to fill up the movie and busted every gut in the theater. Swing Vote instead mounts a tactical assault on the tear ducts while sincerely arguing, with violins set on swell, that politicians are really decent guys. Which is the nuttiest idea in the film.
Bud, a guy who has been late to work every day for six months and who drinks so much on the job that he gets fired from his food-processing gig, nevertheless swears to his civic-minded little girl that he’ll do his citizenly duty and vote for the president. Instead he gets drunk again. (And by the way, cheers to the marketers at Budweiser, who have plastered their logos all over this film about a lazy alcoholic criminal dirtbag.)
The daughter, a grade-schooler, goes to the polling station and, thanks to a snoozing check-in clerk, manages to sneak a ballot and enter it into an electronic vote tabulator. But someone accidentally pulls the plug on the machine before she votes. She gets spooked and runs away after having cast a blank ballot, which according to the Al Gore logic of this movie is grounds for a revote.
That isn’t the only problem with the setup. We’re supposed to believe that this is the only ballot in the entire state of New Mexico that anyone disputes. Moreover, it is stated early in the film that Bud is a felon, yet no one brings this up as a possible complication of his right to vote. Strangest of all, this film, which wants to be considered a middle-of-the-road instruction manual for good citizenship, is blasé on the illegality of one person casting a vote on another’s behalf, much less the fact that the would-be voter is a minor. The Constitution has already provided for a situation in which no one gets a majority of the electoral votes. The election goes to the House. There is no crisis. The law is clear. Little Molly can’t be both the impassioned voice of the dutiful American and a tiny fraudster.
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Kyle Smith is a film critic for the the New York Post. His website is at www.kylesmithonline.com.
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8 Comments
1. Review: “Swing Vote” | KyleSmithOnline.com:[...] some soft pillowy bromides about how everyone has big ol’ American principles. My review is here. Kudos, again, to Budweiser, for the most deranged fit of product placement since Miller sponsored [...]
Aug 1, 2008 - 6:51 am 2. Richard Gottlieb:A lot of time has passed since the original of this film hit the silver screens, but this is a copy of a little known John Barrymore film, “The Great Man Votes.”
Aug 1, 2008 - 7:04 am 3. Dan Irving:The plot, much of the dialogue and the theme apparently were taken from the original shich was far superior for its acting, timeliness (the depression era) and originality.
I like John’s review at Powerline much better:
I saw Swing Vote with my wife and our 11-year-old daughter. We all enjoyed it. There is enough rough language to make the movie inappropriate for most children, but conservatives shouldn’t avoid it. If you’re hypersensitive, you may note that Molly seems to be a liberal and the idea that the federal government should do something to “help people” underlies much of the film’s dialogue. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the Republican Kelsey Grammer would clobber the Democrat Dennis Hopper in any election. On balance, it’s a fair movie that skewers both parties and lampoons the pandering that goes on in every campaign. The message of civic responsibility is legitimately a neutral one, and nothing for conservatives to avoid.
It seems Kyle can’t review any movie without injecting politics. I wonder what he’d do to Scooby-Doo or The Apple Dumpling Gang …
Aug 1, 2008 - 7:24 am 4. Javelin:it’s only a movie, not the template for life! Just a movie, a dumb movie aimed the great unwashed, who are no worse than the anti-intellectual robots who infest blogs like this.
Aug 1, 2008 - 7:33 pm 5. Beej:It seems Kyle can’t review any movie without injecting politics.
It must be true. He took a movie called Swing Vote which was based on an election and he INJECTED POLITICS.
Shame, shame Mr. Smith. Snort.
Aug 1, 2008 - 8:29 pm 6. OmegaPaladin:Really, Kyle, do you just have movie critic bias or something? Does it have to be an art film to be enjoyable for you?
I find that I read your columns less to get a recommendation, but to see if there are films you actually like.
Aug 1, 2008 - 9:12 pm 7. Matt Johnson:I’m glad to have come across this review and the post about ‘The Great Man Votes,’ which I had forgotten about. The review at National Review puzzled me, and I’m glad someone has confirmed my suspicions about the movie before I wasted money on it. As to Kyle’s inability to see films he actually likes, I think that that’s more Hollywood’s problem than Kyle’s.
Aug 4, 2008 - 11:13 am 8. Patrick1:Any movie that debuts in August is going to be a dog. I wish Costner would make TinCup II instead.
Aug 4, 2008 - 3:01 pm