The Campaign

Still more fun to costar with than Jon Heder

 Grade: C +
Director: Jay Roach
Starring: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hr. 25 min.

To really enjoy The Campaign, it’s best to be a) a Will Ferrell fan; b) a Zach Galifianakis fan; or c) from North Carolina. It isn’t surprising that this comedy about small-town candidates battling to win a seat in Congress is set in the Tar Heel State (by way of Louisiana, with filming taking place before N.C. state lawmakers added $60 million in filmmaking tax incentives this year). Ferrell’s parents hail from Roanoke Rapids and he still has relatives living in Cary. Galifianakis was born and raised in Wilkesboro and attended N.C. State University. Moreover, Nick Galifianakis, Zach’s uncle, was a three-term North Carolina congressman who lost the 1972 election for U.S. Senate to a former television commentator named Jesse Helms, a campaign marred by slogans denigrating Galifianakis’ Greek heritage: “Jesse Helms: He’s One of Us.”

Thus, there’s sneaky significance behind a seemingly offhand remark that the racist father of candidate Marty Huggins, played by Galifianakis, is a GOP heavyweight who once worked as a political operative for Helms. So, too, in the specter of Marty, the town and family oddball with a heart of gold, pitted against an opponent skilled in the dark art of mudslinging.

Marty is recruited by two wealthy brothers and industrialists (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to run against four-term congressman Cam Brady (Ferrell), a superficial politician armed with a sculpted coiffure and crowd-pleasing stump speeches about “America, Jesus and freedom.”

Marty, who’s a Southern dandy who works as tourism director for the fictitious burg of Hammond, undergoes a makeover led by his shadowy, take-no-prisoners campaign manager (Dylan McDermott). Gone are Marty’s cardigans and twin pugs, replaced by a chocolate lab and a golden retriever that “test well.” His house décor is soon replete with guns, Bibles and deer heads.

The Campaign finds its satirical groove during a series of absurd attacks that nonetheless ring uncomfortably true in today’s political environment. Cam insinuates that the mustachioed Marty has ties to al-Qaida, while Marty trumpets a canyon-colored short story Cam wrote in grade school about a fantasy land where "everything is free" as proof of the incumbent's Marxist leanings.

Ferrell applies his oblivious blowhard shtick to what’s essentially a John Edwards parody (infidelity included). Meanwhile, Galifianakis channels an effeminate manner and lilt that’s a dead ringer for character actor Leslie Jordan. Yet, as the candidates’ tricks become dirtier, so does the film’s content. The ceaseless profanity has little purpose other than to explore the reaches of an R rating. Every woman in sight is a whore or gold digger. And you don’t have to be a red stater to be put off by a gag that conflates sexual innuendo with a line from “the Lord’s Prayer.”

Despite with a svelte 85-minute running time, the by-the-numbers plot peters out even before it segues into a contrived climax. Any movie that pads screen time with cable news talking heads playing themselves is already out of things to say—seriously, have Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer qualified for SAG cards?

Ferrell and Galifianakis’ outsized personalities, as well as the only known instance in cinematic history of both a baby and dog being punched in the face, can sustain the film only so far. Indeed, the real-life political dots are far more fascinating to connect than any on screen. Otherwise, when it comes to The Campaign, to borrow Marty’s slogan appraising the current state of politics in Washington, D.C., it’s a mess.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Dinner for Schmucks

Of Mice and Mensa

Grade: C

Director: Jay Roach

Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jemaine Clement, Stephanie Szostak, and Zach Galifianakis

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Dinner for Schmucks stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, and, for better or worse, that’s all you really need to know about it. Rudd has built a career playing sardonic straight man to a bevy of clowns – Jason Segel, Seth Rogan, Will Ferrell, and even Steve Carell previously in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Dinner for Schmucks is officially a remake of the 1998 French film Le Dîner de Cons, an adaptation of a Francis Veber play. In execution, it is yet another in the tired line of mismatched-buddy comedies held together not by a script but arid improv.

Rudd plays Tim, an up-and-coming financial executive who angling for a promotion by trying to land the account of Swiss multi-millionaire. Part of his induction up the corporation ladder also involves attending a monthly dinner party in which employees invite eccentric strangers who are secretly mocked and unwittingly compete for the title of the night’s biggest idiot.

Tim’s moral dilemma over taking part quickly ends when he literally runs into Barry (Carell), an IRS employee and amateur taxidermist with a passion for creating elaborate diorama using dead, stuff mice. Tim invites Barry to the company dinner, unaware of the mayhem Barry’s entrée will have on his personal and professional life.

Carell is an amusing performer, but his shtick can get mired in a one-note rut. Here, Barry sports a funny hairstyle and a silly grin, a set-up accented by Rudd’s droll comebacks and one insipid sequence after another. The result is uneven and surprisingly dull – for me, the only real laugh was seeing Ron Livingston, star of Office Space, cast as a soulless corporate lackey.

The fact that Tim uses Barry for his own selfish motives at Barry’s expense is distasteful. But, the film waves aside the fact that Barry blindly, gleefully wreaks havoc with Tim’s life by convincing both he and his art curator girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) that the other is carrying on an affair, Tim with a former fling and stalker named Darla (Lucy Punch) and Julie with Kieran (Jemaine Clement), her bizarro performance artist client. Instead, it reserves scorn only for Tim when he has the temerity to express consternation about his new annoying acquaintance.

But, director Jay Roach – who lacks the talent to carry off such a black comic conceit – saves the film’s biggest flaw for the titular dinner show. We are supposed to wag our fingers at Tim’s boss (Bruce Greenwood) and his rich minions for cruelly cackling at the evening’s “entertainment,” which includes a pet psychic, a vulture wrangler, a blind fencer, and even Therman (Zach Galifianakis), Barry’s coworker who claims the gift of mind control and taunts Barry about the fact that he is sleeping with Barry’s ex-wife. At the same time, however, the movie’s comic hook rests on the audience’s shared schadenfreude over these oddballs, Barry included, thereby encouraging us to partake in those same shark-tank antics. Ultimately, the only schmucks at this Dinner are the ones foolhardy enough to fork over money to see it.

Neil Morris