Mr. Boo Klist — liking audio books nearly as much as printed ones — now wants to recommend a new movie that’s gotten ho-hum reviews, Kevin Costner’s Swing Vote.
Even the critics I like get stuck on the probability of its premise, that a presidential election through odd circumstances depends on a single vote, in this case a New Mexico ne’er-do-well played by Costner. First impulse is to say this movie is a fantasy so get over it, and the second is to note that Florida’s dangling chad strangling the vote in 2000 was nearly as improbable. (HBO’s Recount though a little heavy-handed explains it well.)
Swing Vote is not so much a satire as a comedy. It has satirical elements such as the cynical last-minute commercials the two campaigns throw together. You also have scores of jokes (both family banter and political one-liners) and even a pratfall or two. You’re also left — if you enter the theater with an open mind — with matters to think and talk about afterward and even moist eyes. It’s not a profound indie flick with subtleties and nuances. It’s big-time Hollywood with familiar faces in all major roles save two, the extraordinary girl playing Costner’s daughter and the woman playing the local TV reporter.
The show’s heart is in the right place, and that doesn’t mean it’s particularly Capra-esque, the damn with feint praise comment of the critics. Capra didn’t let likely natural responses appear when that would interfere with the cloying moral, and he hewed to the traditional plot arc where the hero not only wins but becomes a near-saint. Costner’s Bud indeed grows but just barely enough to do the right thing. Actually, he can choose among several right things, a realistic touch.
Swing Vote is a tonic a month before the fake party conventions. The enthusiasm of the full auditorium at the local multiplex indicated it might run as long as the overrated Batman flick.
One of the points of the movie is how out of touch the politicians and their handlers are with the desperate parts of the real America. This year’s Barack Obama and John McCain likely have no intimate familiarity with the trailer park lifestyle, no more than George II, Al Gore or John Kerry. Yet, Bill Clinton would have understood the Costner character’s situation, apples-to-apples.
