September 06, 2012

MOVIES: The Campaign (Jay Roach, 2012)

Jay Roach has made some sharp movies about politics for HBO -- Recount and Game Change -- so I was hopeful that The Campaign would be a sharp, biting satire of contemporary political campaigns. But the jokes we get are either overly familiar or so far removed from reality to have any satiric edge.

Will Ferrell is a North Carolina congressman whose district becomes a target of the billionaire Motch brothers (even that simple a joke would be funnier if the Koch brothers pronounced their name "Kotch" instead of "Koke"); they choose as their candidate a bumbling local played by Zach Galifianakis and assign a ruthless campaign manager (Dylan McDermott) to whip him into shape.

Ferrell's not doing anything here he doesn't done to better effect in other movies; John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd have some mildly amusing moments as the scheming brothers; and Galifianakis still isn't funny.

A waste of time.

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