Movie title: The Campaign
Running time: 85
minutes
Directed by: Jay Roach
Starring: Will Ferrel, Zach Galifiankis
South Carolina congressman Cam Brady is campaigning for a
fourth term. Running unopposed, he is a religious, patriotic family man to his
people but behind the facade he is careless, philandering and unfit to lead. His suitability and popularity comes into
question when he accidentally leaves a raunchy message to one of his lovers on
the answering machine of an overly Christian family.
His financiers, The Motch brothers, two extremely wealthy
industrialists, need a candidate that will push their business agenda which
include building Chinese factories in the state and placing “Made in America”
tags on dolls actually made in china by children earning 50 cents an hour.
After Cam Brady’s humorous but failed attempt to redeem himself following the
message, they decide to back another horse.
They get Marty Huggins, the son of their ally and the head
of the local tourism office to run against Brady. It does not help that Huggins
is a man child who wears a waist wallet, attends a ladies gym and struts around
two identical mutts with matching bow ties. Cam has a field day destroying him.
After Huggins is humiliated in a few rallies, the Motch
brothers, not ones to give up easily, send Tim Wattley a haughty, mysterious,
straight faced man to reshape Huggins and manage his campaign. Tom changes
everything from Marty Huggins’ way of talking, posture and dressing to his
children’s bed time.
What follows is a series of fierce battles between the new
and improved Marty Huggins and the incumbent Cam Brady for the seat. They
employ all sorts of absurd and humorous campaign techniques that lead to snake
bites, babies being punched and even a pornographic campaign video.
At its timely release, “The
campaign” tries to shine a light on how dirty politics can be and how the
drive to win influences the candidates into doing all manners of absurdities. It’s
a story of politics, guns, family, corruption and bandana wearing dogs. The
lead acts Will Ferrel and Zach Galifiankis who play Cam Brady and Marty Huggins
respectively, do their roles justice. Will
Ferrel who previously starred in “Stranger
than Fiction”, is able to bring out his carefree, tomcatting character to
life while Zach Galifiankis does not disappoint in his wimpy but loveable
antics that we’ve previously seen in “Due
date” and “The Hangover”.
In its initial stages the film is quite comical with Cam
Brady giving everyone from teachers to park workers the credit for being the
backbone of the country and establishing Marty Huggins awkward relationship with his
father. However, as you proceed, the
film, directed by Jay Roach famous for “Meet the parents” and “Meet the Fockers”, seems to loose its
sense of direction.
The script lacks the
seriousness to make it a proper political satire and a lot of its humor is
driven by vertiginous vulgarity, offensive talk and even in one case, tasteless
nudity. The makers in some instances seem to go well out of their way just to
throw in a dozen more curse words scene after scene. There are unpleasant instances
of children listening to music with lewd lyrics and sexual connotations are
pushed to the extreme.
Every now and then, the film breaks into spiels trying to
address an important issue such as the media’s role in bad politics or the
plight of child labor; these scenes are however marred in vulgarity so much
that the point is lost. “The campaign” is a far cry from other
big political films such as Alan Pakula’s “All
the president’s men” or Barry Levinson’s “Wag the Dog” that have shaped the genre.
In as far as comedy for comedy’s sake goes, there are
numerous laughs to be gotten from “The
campaign” but if intelligent humor is your cup of tea, then this is not the
restaurant for you.
