SWING VOTE [PG-13]
review by Kilian Melloy

Imagine a feature film version of “The Simpsons.” Oops, that’s already been done… well, imagine it anyway, only with the title Swing Vote, and featuring live actors.

Now image culling out the whole Simpson clan except for Homer and Lisa.

Now cast Kevin Costner as Homer and Madeline Carroll as Lisa, relocate them to a trailer park in Texico, New Mexico, and give them new names… say, Bud and Molly.

The “Simpsons” comparison is a kind way of saying that we have seen this movie before, and sometimes not even at the Cineplex. That, and Swing Vote ain’t Kevin Costner’s Bulworth, which is a masterpiece in comparison; nor is it Costner’s Bob Roberts, which is a cult classic.

It’s also a way of acknowledging the movie’s satirical bent, and its over-the-friggin’-top story, a plot that whacks us in the face with its sheer audacity, only to stun once again with its volleys of absurdity.

Swing Vote pivots… or swings… on the conceit that a Presidential election depends on one single county in New Mexico. Fair enough: this is the part of the movie we saw in real life in 2000, except that the one county the election depended upon was in Florida (and, of course, the voters did not decide the outcome; the Supreme Court did).

But then Swing Vote takes things a step further: the contested county in New Mexico will go to the Republican incumbent, President Boone (Kelsey Grammar) or to the Democratic challenger, Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper) depending on which way a single man… Homer, er, Bud… chooses to vote.

The reasons for this are so convoluted and so far-fetched as to make it not worth going into here. Suffice it to say that Bud finds himself an overnight political celebrity because he will single-handedly decide the political fate of this country — “for generations,” as the movie’s talking heads (every bit as pompous and bombastic as their real life counterparts) assure their audiences.

As a comedy, this material is worn thin. The opening sequence shows us everything about Bud and Molly’s relationship: he’s a late-forty-something stuck in perpetual adolescence, and she’s an almost preternaturally poised and intelligent girl of about ten. Their rapport is nothing like a healthy father-daughter relationship, and it’s the sort of role reversal that only works well and looks cute on the big screen. (In real life, it tends to end with charred pickup trucks or a mound of cooling ashes where the family home once stood.) The movie’s child welfare factor is only amped up when Molly tells her dad, “If you screw this up, I’m leaving you.”

Molly, like all little girls of her ilk, is a take-charge sort, fearlessly dressing down her father for his beer-guzzling ways and taking him to task for not only having no intention of doing his civic duty at the ballot box, but not even knowing what the words “civic” and “duty” mean when placed together in a sentence.

But all that changes when Bud finds himself personally courted by the most narrow and specific voter turn-out drive in history. Both presidential contenders are men of honor and integrity, but they are also at the mercy of their campaign directors: the President takes direction from a slick and ruthless shark named Martin Fox (Stanley Tucci), and Greenleaf reluctantly follows the orders of Art Crumb (Nathan Lane), a political strategist who has ever seen a client win. As the ambitions of the powers behind the two parties’ respective candidates careen out of control, both campaigns seize on Bud’s every utterance, racing to cast themselves as the party most aligned to Bud’s personal tastes — which is how the game is played, of course, except that Bud is barely articulate and keeps saying things that he hasn’t thought through.

The result: a Republican president who enacts tough environmental laws and pledges his support to gay marriage, and a Democratic opponent who trash-talks immigrants and vows to repeal Roe v. Wade. To Fox, this is simply an extension of the time-honored way things are done. “We’re courting the voter,” he tells the president, before advising that Boone offer Bud a bribe.

All of this is irritating to the point of breaking you out in hives, but then the realization hits: Bud, in his NASCAR-watching, beer-guzzling, politically ignorant ways, is the personification of the white male vote: Bud, in all his numbers across America’s heartland, can and does elect presidents, who can and do promise foolish things in pursuit of his vote and worry about principle later.

The media comes in for a trouncing, of course (there’s a human tsunami of reporters camped outside of Bud’s trailer, and a babe-a-licious newshound played by Paula Patton cozying up to Bud inside), and so do special interest groups like The Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and so on, who turn up in their legions to crowd the citizens of Texico and take part in what the news outlets call “Bud Watch.”

But the most battered target of all is us: that is to say, We The People, the electorate who don’t know the issues and vote for the guy with the most convincing line of down-home fly-fishing chat (or the easiest way of letting on whether he goes for boxers or briefs).

The old adage says that some are born to greatness and others are thrust into the role. This movie is a shambles, and writers Joshua Michael Stern (who also directs, though in a workmanlike and ham-handed manner) and Jason Richman make their point in gaudy neon letters six meters high, but they do have a point, and it’s this: we’re letting our greatness slip away in America the same way we allow all of life’s hopes and aspirations to escape us: out of laziness, and lack of focus, and a refusal to do the hard work of knowing what’s going on in the world.

Maybe we can’t really blame the makers of this movie for making it so obvious, so garish, and so paint-by-numbers. If we’re gonna act like sixth graders… real sixth graders, not smartest-girl-in-the-room sixth graders like Molly… then they’re gonna talk to us like sixth graders.

If Swing Vote were actually going to educate anyone, it might even be worth it, but the audience it’s aimed at aren’t likely to buy tickets to a comedy that so plainly makes its jokes out of tutting them, and everyone already worried about the sad state of our electorate will find little to laugh about here.•••

Kilian Melloy is the assistant arts editor for EDGE.