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Customer Reviews
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"Dear Lord Jesus, I really must insist that you help me win the election tomorrow"
"Dear Lord Jesus," prays Tracy Flick the night before the election for student body president, "I do not often speak with you and ask for things, but now, I really must insist that you help me win the election tomorrow because I deserve it and Paul Metzler doesn't, as you well know. I realize that it was your divine hand that disqualified Tammy Metzler and now I'm asking that you go that one last mile and make sure to put me in office where I belong so that I may carry out your will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen."
Tracy (Reese Witherspoon) is an overachieving senior in suburban George Washington Carver High School (where the student body is all white). What Tracy wants, she gets, using a combination of single-minded hard work, bright smiles as phony as a television infomercial, eager volunteering and a ruthlessness that varies between chirpiness and squinted eyes. As Tracy says, quoting her Mom, "The weak are always trying to sabotage the strong."
Then one of Tracy's teachers, Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), decides the world needs to be saved from Tracy. He talks one of the school's popular football athletes to run against Tracy. From now on Jim has his hands full trying to sabotage Tracy's relentless campaign, impregnate his wife, convince himself his next door neighbor, a recent divorcee, is really going to understand him if they can only check into a motel for a couple of hours...and deal with the consequences of everything he set in motion.
Election, written and directed by Alexander Payne, is one of the funniest, darkest satires of human behavior since Jonathan Swift recommended that the poor should simply sell their children to be eaten by the rich. There are a lot of teenagers in this movie, but it's not just another teen-age movie. We're looking at the ludicrous depths to which ambition and good intentions, when mixed with politics, can take us. If that seems ponderous, it's about as ponderous as Tracy Flick's mom writing compulsively to people like Connie Chung and Elizabeth Dole asking for advice. (Never give up on your dreams is the usual reply.)
The script moves from the exaggerated to the outlandish with great style. The actors deliver the goods with deadpan sincerity and self-serving honesty. Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick hits the bull's-eye with unnerving accuracy. She is so sincere in her insincerity, which is, in Tracy Flick's own way, completely sincere, that Witherspoon makes us smile and shudder at the same time. As outstanding as she is, Matthew Broderick is the heart of the movie. Jim McAllister is part lech, part nebbish, but mostly good guy. It's a funny, almost poignant performance. Payne's script and Broderick's acting give us a perfect ending that's just as brittle, cool and amusing as the rest of the movie.
I like Election a lot. I hope as time passes the movie isn't forgotten. The DVD transfer, widescreen and anamorphic, looks just fine. There's an audio commentary, which I didn't listen to, by Payne.
Rating: -
SMART, FUNNY AND CLOSER TO THE TRUTH THEN IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!
This comedy has a great cast headed by Reese Witherspoon. Reese truly embodies this character that I'm sure we all remember from high school. The over achieving, over obsessed teen that would be involved in every school function and would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. This film will remind you of those 80's school comedies but, it's a much smarter satirical film then those type comedies. Well above average for these types of movies.
Rating: 
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Why vote at all?
Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell) asks the question at a Pep Rally in this film. Her one promise, if she gets elected as class president, she'll disband the Student Government and the student body won't have to sit through another [...] Pep Rally.
Her audience went wild.
We've all been there--in varying places in the student body at events like these. Some, like Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) are desperately trying to grab as much control as we can. Others like Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) are trying to turn a bad situation into good and maybe do some good for others while they're at it.
Tammy--well, Tammy just wants revenge on her ex-girlfriend Lisa who took up with her brother Paul to prove she's not a lesbian.
Those are your choices if you're one of the students of Carver High in "Election." And the plot just gets more convoluted from there.
You see, nobody but Tracy really wanted the presidency until Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), the Student Government Advisor and Social Sciences teacher, stepped in and suggested that Paul, who had a sports injury and couldn't play for the year, run to 'give a little back' to the school.
Why did McAllister do this? Last year, Tracy'd had a fling with a fellow teacher and one of his friends---McAllister didn't want to be in the position to have to "spend more time with Tracy," when she won the election--and that was closer to that particular 'student body' than he wanted to be.
Like so many elections--there's just nobody to really root for. That in itself, was depressing.
Matthew Broderick's performance was said by many critics to have improved from limpid with this film, but I just don't see it. He never particularly demonstrated anything but an immobile sort of pathos.
Reese Witherspoon was interesting as the 'Monica Lewinsky wannabe' but "Election" in no way was her best performance.
[...]
Rating: -
Pathetic
This movie is offensively crude, vulgar, and trashy. It's one of the worst movies I've seen. I can't believe Reese Witherspoon would associate her good name with such garbage.
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" A PICK FLICK!"
Alexander Payne in "Election" has created a winning, contemporary version of satirical "old comedy," looking for instance at that usual staple of comic writing, romantic love, with an unfashionably jaundiced eye, preferring instead to group almost all his characters, whatever the nature of their "relationships," as essentially knaves or fools. The American race to the top and the people used and discarded along the way are his subjects, starting with the admittedly minor election of a class president at an Omaha, Nebraska high school but ending up on the fringes of real political power in Washington, D.C.
Tracy Enid Flick (Reese Witherspoon), one of the film's two central characters, is monotonously bent on succeeding not only in the high school election but, sadly, in just about everything else.
A creation of a stage mother of sorts, Tracy is an eerily familiar American type, the cute little girl who, no matter where on the playground she might be, at the ringing of the bell is nonetheless always first in the cookie line. She has been described by one blue state critic as a combination of Pat and Richard Nixon, but it's unduly narrow not to see that her character transcends party lines, that she is both the Nixons AND the Clintons rolled into one. For her, anything is fair game if it enables success, and this in whatever contest she's entered, no matter how trivial.
Her principal opponent is the initially high-minded high school history teacher Mr.M (Matthew Broderick), ponderer of questions on ethics and morals. His character, however, is complicated, like Tracy's, both by foolish lust and finally envy. Ironically, he comes to represent the knavish underside of Tracy's own mad race to the top.
The characters who receive the least harsh satirical treatment in the film are the Metzler kids, both of whom stand in marked contrast to Tracy. Paul, the varsity jock who actually has to be persuaded to run against Tracy, is essentially just a dumb bunny with a good heart, while his devious sister, the anarchic, uber-outsider Tammy, is more interested in simply finding a female soulmate than in winning meaningless elections. Despite the bravura performances of Witherspoon and Broderick, Chris Klein (Paul) and especially Jessica Campbell (Tammy) come very close to stealing the picture from them.
All told, "Election" is an early satiric triumph from one of America's most insightful contemporary writer/directors.
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