Movie Review: The Campaign

So I’m not the biggest Will Ferrell fan in the world, though I have seen a bunch of Celebrity Jeopardy clips, Talladega Nights, and that one where he’s a character in a book, but I saw this one anyways because he’s pretty darn funny in what I have seen, and also I’ve been getting all the heck kinds of interested in political stuff as of late, so this seemed like as good a way as any to further immerse myself via satire.

Anywho, Ferrell plays an incumbent Democrat Congressmen who is your basic sound byte vomiting Washington DC type guy who apparently has a whole bunch of extra-marital affairs, while Zach Galifianakis (I had to Google this one, also props to him for not taking the easy way out and going with a simpler name) plays the Republican candidate who is being controlled by billionaires who want to build a Chinese sweat shop on US soil (to save money on shipping). What proceeds from this is a very funny, very inappropriate, and fortunately very poignant movie.

The Campaign is consistently funny throughout, from the opening until the last gag in the credits. Furthermore, almost every character is funny. The Campaign is utterly unapologetic about where it mines humor from, using anything from overwrought insults to a Chinese maid who fakes one of those southern black accents like from The Help or whatever (didn’t actually see that movie). Warning to new mothers, a baby gets punched in the face in this movie. This is also hilarious.

The Campaign is also exceedingly vulgar. Now, as I mentioned before I haven’t seen a whole lot of Will Ferrell movies, so maybe if I had I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. I knew it was Rated R (but only because the girl at the ticket booth actually carded me, I mean come on now I haven’t shaved in a few days, they don’t even card me at most bars) but I guess it couldn’t have hurt to pay a little more attention to all the rating subtext. Wouldn’t have stopped me from seeing the movie, but I could have saved my eyes from that initial widening.

As for how far art imitates life in this instance, this may just be me being cynical, but I think it manages to hit closer to home than it necessarily had to. I think we would only be kidding ourselves if we think we don’t have elected officials whose only real agenda is staying in office, and we’d have to be downright ignorant to think that there isn’t a ridiculous amount of money being put towards manipulating both the elections and the people in government themselves. Unfortunately, most aren’t the sort of helpless buffoons who make their shortcomings so obvious that resigning is the only way to save face.

I hesitate to say I recommend this movie, because wow it is really vulgar, but ultimately it has a good message and it is funny, so yeah go ahead and see it I guess.