Swing Vote: Comedy-drama. Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern. (PG-13. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/movies.)
It's not easy to play a stupid guy. The temptations are everywhere - to wink at the audience as if to say, "I'm smart, actually" - or to try to make being stupid a form of adorable. Kevin Costner plays a good-natured idiot in "Swing Vote," a middle-aged man who has squandered what little potential he had in favor of life as a hard-drinking good-for-nothing, and he gives a remarkable performance.
It's not the kind of role that wins Oscars, because Academy Awards usually go to actors playing high-status roles, powerful souls, either good or evil. By contrast, Bud, the likable loser in "Swing Vote," is low status all the way, a man who can barely function socially, whose instincts are all wrong, whose impulses are either vulgar or diffident. Costner slips right into that mode of being, bringing to the characterization precision, observation and a heretofore unexploited flair for physical comedy.
If the advance advertising has communicated one thing about this movie, you already know that it's about an average fellow (actually, below average) whose single vote will determine the winner of the presidential election. The scenario is this: It all comes down to New Mexico's electoral votes, and the popular vote in New Mexico is tied. However, Bud's ballot was never tallied, and so he has the right to cast a written ballot - in effect, to choose the winner.
Political junkies are an obvious natural constituency for this movie, and they will be amused by the presentation of the candidates and their political ads. Kelsey Grammer is the Republican incumbent, a borderline idiot, and Dennis Hopper plays the Democratic challenger, the perfect image of the kind of liberal candidate that inevitably loses, two parts Mondale and one part Dukakis, with just a dash of Kucinich. When he goes skeet shooting with Bud, the recoil of the rifle sends him flying backward.
The campaign comes down to a crazy effort to court one man's vote, and so each candidate starts pandering - with the Republican posing as a pro-gay marriage environmentalist and the Democrat espousing anti-abortion, anti-immigration positions - in television ads that are the comic highlight of the picture.
However, anyone who approaches the movie with hopes of finding a serious elucidation of an intriguing political hypothetical will be disappointed. For example, until I realized it was not that kind of movie, I wanted to know who was ahead in the national popular vote (an important weight to throw in the balance in a deadlocked election). I also kept waiting for the candidates to get serious in discussing the issues with Bud. But, of course, such a story direction would have led to a dead end, a polemic for one side or the other.
The movie's real interest isn't in political issues so much as in presenting Bud as an archetype of a certain kind of American, living on the fringes, with little sense of the world around him. The script, by Jason Richman and director Joshua Michael Stern, is very good at showing us the thought patterns of a guy who really doesn't know how life works or how to comport himself outside his limited sphere. The scenes between Bud and the political honchos that come courting him are painfully accurate portrayals of someone whose social compulsion is to bring everything down to a comfortable level of clowning, even if it means being perceived as a buffoon. Costner has the internal workings of this guy down, and he's well matched by young Madeline Carroll, who plays his precocious, loving daughter, an adult's mind in a child's body.
The movie is a bit long. Sometimes the audience is ahead of the story, and the setup itself has some built-in challenges that no script could have overcome. But the mix of comedy and drama is winning; Costner couldn't be better, and the little girl is a find. The film is characterized by fine performances throughout, including that of Mare Winningham, who turns up in a single scene and brings to it a whole anguished life history.
Real-life political reporters and commentators, such as Chris Matthews and Campbell Brown, make appearances. Arianna Huffington has the agony of actually having to say, "Somewhere Franklin and Jefferson are smiling," as though either founder would have liked the prospect of an idiot choosing the president. Not likely. After all, it was Jefferson, the ultimate democrat among the founders, who said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be." Jefferson would not be smiling on Bud. Bud was his worst nightmare.
Courtesy: sfgate.com
It's not easy to play a stupid guy. The temptations are everywhere - to wink at the audience as if to say, "I'm smart, actually" - or to try to make being stupid a form of adorable. Kevin Costner plays a good-natured idiot in "Swing Vote," a middle-aged man who has squandered what little potential he had in favor of life as a hard-drinking good-for-nothing, and he gives a remarkable performance.
It's not the kind of role that wins Oscars, because Academy Awards usually go to actors playing high-status roles, powerful souls, either good or evil. By contrast, Bud, the likable loser in "Swing Vote," is low status all the way, a man who can barely function socially, whose instincts are all wrong, whose impulses are either vulgar or diffident. Costner slips right into that mode of being, bringing to the characterization precision, observation and a heretofore unexploited flair for physical comedy.
If the advance advertising has communicated one thing about this movie, you already know that it's about an average fellow (actually, below average) whose single vote will determine the winner of the presidential election. The scenario is this: It all comes down to New Mexico's electoral votes, and the popular vote in New Mexico is tied. However, Bud's ballot was never tallied, and so he has the right to cast a written ballot - in effect, to choose the winner.
Political junkies are an obvious natural constituency for this movie, and they will be amused by the presentation of the candidates and their political ads. Kelsey Grammer is the Republican incumbent, a borderline idiot, and Dennis Hopper plays the Democratic challenger, the perfect image of the kind of liberal candidate that inevitably loses, two parts Mondale and one part Dukakis, with just a dash of Kucinich. When he goes skeet shooting with Bud, the recoil of the rifle sends him flying backward.
The campaign comes down to a crazy effort to court one man's vote, and so each candidate starts pandering - with the Republican posing as a pro-gay marriage environmentalist and the Democrat espousing anti-abortion, anti-immigration positions - in television ads that are the comic highlight of the picture.
However, anyone who approaches the movie with hopes of finding a serious elucidation of an intriguing political hypothetical will be disappointed. For example, until I realized it was not that kind of movie, I wanted to know who was ahead in the national popular vote (an important weight to throw in the balance in a deadlocked election). I also kept waiting for the candidates to get serious in discussing the issues with Bud. But, of course, such a story direction would have led to a dead end, a polemic for one side or the other.
The movie's real interest isn't in political issues so much as in presenting Bud as an archetype of a certain kind of American, living on the fringes, with little sense of the world around him. The script, by Jason Richman and director Joshua Michael Stern, is very good at showing us the thought patterns of a guy who really doesn't know how life works or how to comport himself outside his limited sphere. The scenes between Bud and the political honchos that come courting him are painfully accurate portrayals of someone whose social compulsion is to bring everything down to a comfortable level of clowning, even if it means being perceived as a buffoon. Costner has the internal workings of this guy down, and he's well matched by young Madeline Carroll, who plays his precocious, loving daughter, an adult's mind in a child's body.
The movie is a bit long. Sometimes the audience is ahead of the story, and the setup itself has some built-in challenges that no script could have overcome. But the mix of comedy and drama is winning; Costner couldn't be better, and the little girl is a find. The film is characterized by fine performances throughout, including that of Mare Winningham, who turns up in a single scene and brings to it a whole anguished life history.
Real-life political reporters and commentators, such as Chris Matthews and Campbell Brown, make appearances. Arianna Huffington has the agony of actually having to say, "Somewhere Franklin and Jefferson are smiling," as though either founder would have liked the prospect of an idiot choosing the president. Not likely. After all, it was Jefferson, the ultimate democrat among the founders, who said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be." Jefferson would not be smiling on Bud. Bud was his worst nightmare.
Courtesy: sfgate.com
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