ELECTION (1999) - Movie Review

Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Phil Reeves, Delaney Driscoll, Mark Harelik, Molly Hagan, Colleen Camp
Genre: Comedy
Writer: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Runtime: 103 min
Rated: R for strong sexuality, sex-related dialogue and language, and a scene of drug use
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Synopsis:

Reese Witherspoon plays Tracy Flick, a straight-A go-getter daetermined to be president of Carver High’s student body. Popular teacher Jim McAllister (Broderick) decides to derail Tracy’s obsessive overachieving by recruiting an opposition candidate.

Review:

Based on a novel by "The Leftovers" author Tom Perrotta, Alexander Payne's "Election" is a black comedy of the darkest kind that uses the high school microcosm as a conduit for a cynical satire of politics and immorality. The focus is on high shool teacher Jim McAllister's (Matthew Broderick) attempts to derail over-achieving go-getter student Tracy Flick's (Reese Witherspoon) bid for school president, but the story alternates between the points of view of four main characters. Each offers their own perspective on unfolding events via voice-over, which gives the movie a mockumentary feel. The entire process of electing a school president echoes modern politics and the ruthless electoral competition, but the movie also aims some of its sharp irony towards the education system and its futility.

It's also an interesting character study. Broderick's McAllister doesn't quite live up to that old saying "practise what you preach". He's pretty much a terrible person, not just at school, but also in his personal life, continuously trying to justify actions that are unjustifiable. His feud with Tracy has more to do with the gnawing feeling in the back of his mind that she just might end up being someone important in life, while he'll always be stuck in a mediocre existence. Of course, Tracy is no picnic, either, cold-blooded when it comes to achieving victory and far from the moral candidate she struggles to appear. They are both flawed humans, and Payne really digs deep into the broken mechanisms that make these characters tick, but at the same time doesn't judge them. He merely observes and lets us sum up the bottom line.

Broderick and Witherspoon are both great, but Witherspoon steals the show with her manic performance, a quirky tour de force of cartoonish pluck and devilish determination. Broderick plays it understated as the movie's punching bag, and he's hilarious the more he digs himself deeper into holes filled with embarrassment, and never learns his lessons. The film earned Witherspoon a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical), but I feel she deserved an Oscar nod for her amazing work.

Perfectly written and directed, "Election" showcases such deft storytelling and assured filmmaking that it's hard to believe this is only Payne's second film, following 1996's "Citizen Ruth". The filmmaker received an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay (shared with co-writer Jim Taylor), and that was only the beginning for Payne who eventually went on to win two screenplay Academy Awards for "Sideways" in 2004 and "The Descendants" in 2011.

"Election" is a savage satire that provides both laughs and bitter food for thought. It's also director Alexander Payne's most provocative movie, and a remarkable achievement that remains relevant even 25 years later. What a wonderfully dark comedy to watch in these troubled times !

SCORE: 10/10