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Film review: ‘The Campaign’
Wed, Aug 8, 2012 (5:53 p.m.)
The Campaign opens to theaters Friday.
The Details
- The Campaign
- Directed by Jay Roach
- Rated R
- Beyond the Weekly
- Official Movie Site
- IMDb: The Campaign
- Rotten Tomatoes: The Campaign
Although it features a thinly veiled analogue for the Koch brothers and offers some pointed barbs about corporate influence in politics, The Campaign isn’t much of a political satire. Director Jay Roach has worked on both dumb comedies (the Austin Powers movies, Meet the Parents/Fockers) and political docudramas (Recount, Game Change), and here he sticks mostly to the former, pitting Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis against each other as a pair of dim-witted politicians vying for the same seat in a small North Carolina congressional district. The movie’s takedowns of political mudslinging are pretty broad and toothless, but Ferrell (doing a variation on his Saturday Night Live George W. Bush impersonation) and Galifianakis (as a fey eccentric) riff off of each other well and do a great job of heightening the comic absurdity. The jokes are nearly as inconsistent as the social commentary, but when they land, The Campaign is way more entertaining than actual politics.
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