From left: Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott, and Will Ferrell. (Patti Perret/Warner Bros.)
America. Jobs. Freedom. This is the slogan that plasters ads for incumbent Republican Rep. Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) as he tries to hold on to his North Carolina district. Like any career politician, Brady knows how to play the game down to the specific interest, assuring one group of voters that troops are the backbone of our nation, while telling another group that Filipino Tilt-a-Whirl operators are also the backbone of our nation. The trouble is, Brady is prone to sexual dalliances unbecoming of a family man, a transgression made public thanks to a misdirected and very explicit answering machine message. This is where the Motch Brothers (Dan Akroyd and John Lithgow) come in.
The Motches plan to sell their chunk of North Carolina to the Chinese, and need a winning candidate to make sure their plan will succeed. The Motches are obviously based on the Kochs, but while the film’s politics none too subtly satirize conservative targets, director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers) and screenwriters Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell find some humanity in the Grand Old Party in the form of an effeminate southern boy named Chester Huggens (Zach Galifiankis). The awkward Huggens, a swishy stereotype in 80s sweaters who is nevertheless a happily married man, is under orders from campaign manager Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott) to essentially change who he is. He plays along to a point, but Galifianakis has a couple of moments where his expressive face rises above the fray of politics and this movie: hurt by a session of trash-talking with Brady, Huggens’ eyes quietly reveal his regret and self-loathing for lowering himself to the baseness of the campaign.
He isn’t the only character who plays at someone else. Take the Motches’ Chinese maid, Mrs. Yao (Karen Maruyama), who lays on the thick Southern accent of deferential servitude that her bosses want. The Chinese factory subplot is introduced with a shot of a doll factory, a sly reminder that campaigns produce what seem like interchangeable parts.
The Campaign is filled with the broad stereotypes typical of an increasingly divisive electorate and of a Will Ferrell vehicle, but there’s a broader and in fact biblical message at the movie’s heart. What do you benefit if you gain the world but lose your own soul? How much is a human being willing to go against what he truly believes in order to win a vote? One of the great themes in literature is that of finding your voice. The Campaign is not even great cinema, but in its ribald, slapstick way it turns that old trope on its head: Would you betray your own voice in order to get ahead?
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Directed by Jay Roach
Written by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell
With Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Dylan McDermott, John Lithgow, Dan Akroyd.
Rated R for crude sexual content, language and brief nudity
Running time 85 minutes
Opens today at the multiplexes.
