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Canberra Today 16°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: ‘The Campaign’ (MA) ***

WHAT I observed in a brief stint as a part-time staffer for an ACT Government minister did not persuade me to love or respect politics as a noble, worthy, or rewarding calling.

So I looked forward to getting a buzz from Jay Roach’s film parodying politics US style, in which Will Ferrell plays republican Congressman Brady, confident of election for a fifth term simply because he has so hornswoggled the electorate that standing against him is a no-brainer.

The stinky-rich Motch brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) set out to feather their nest even more than it already is by conning local barber Marty (Zach Galifianakis) to stand as a sort of independent Democrat.

A sweet unaggressive goofus, Marty has no vices, a nuclear family over which he and his wife impose high moral standards, and little knowledge of how to do either politics or government. The Motches engage ass-kicker Tim (Dylan McDermott) to drive Marty’s campaign up a very steep learning curve.

What happens? A lot. The screenplay by-passes few aspects of political campaigning US-style as it squeezes a copious flow of comic juice from a zany plot that makes no apology for sparing no cliché, wallowing in fallibility, channelling stupidity as a commonplace and elevating it to a prime virtue, and descending into rat cunning on both sides of the contest when the going gets tough.

The result is a bundle of laughs overlaying serious exposure of the shortcomings of the American polity. Ferrell may not be to everybody’s taste, but he and Galifianakis both know how to do unrestrained yet masterfully controlled comedy. Writers Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell provide a screenplay unconstrained by good taste or political morality as it holds a mirror to a theme that should concern us all.

 

At Greater Union, Hoyts and Limelight

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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