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Starring Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Frankie Ingrassia,
Delaney Driscoll, Molly Hagan, Mark Harelik. Written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. Directed
by Alexander Payne.
Jim McAllister (Broderick) is a well-liked and highly respected civics and history teacher at suburban Omaha, Nebraska George Carver High School. A three time winner of teacher of the year, he genuinely loves teaching, and likes his life the way it is. He runs the annual student council elections, and this year the incredibly over-ambitious Tracy Flick (Witherspoon) is running an energetic campaign, even though she's unopposed. Jim's best friend and colleague Dave (Harelik) had an affair with Tracy that got Dave fired, and Jim does not like or trust her goody-two shoes act. Jim convinces a not too bright, but genuinely decent football player Paul (Klein) to run against her to make a contest out of it, and derail Tracy's grand ambitions. His sister Tammy (Campbell) is smitten with Lisa (Ingrassia), a pretty young classmate she's grown up with, but who no longer wishes to continue with their "experimenting". To add insult to injury, Lisa puts the moves on Paul, and goes all out to prove to herself and Tammy that she's straight. Paul cannot believe his good fortune and happily makes Lisa his campaign manager, and he has no idea why Tammy suddenly enters the election race against him. The campaign turns nasty, and McAllister's personal life starts to get very complex, until events spiral out of control. While set in high school, Election is not primarily about high school. It is about ambition, greed, power and lust. And mostily it's about the uncontainable capacity in human beings to rationalize that what they are doing is the right thing to do when it clearly is not. Jim begins the movie questioning his class about the difference between ethics and morals, setting the tone for the characters' conflicts with morality. Dave rationalizes his affair with Tracy because he "loves her" and she makes him "feel alive" in a way his wife never could. Tracy rationalizes the same affair with the thought that Dave "understands the real me". Jim, when he thinks he's caught Tracy destroying Paul's posters, lectures Tracy about "life's mistakes" including her affair with Dave, while he's busy arranging his own affair with Dave's ex-wife while his wife's at home. Possibly the best is Tammy's explanation of her attraction to Lisa. "It's not like I'm a lesbian or anything. I'm attracted to the person. It's just that all the people I've been attracted to happen to be girls." The movie very effectively uses voice-overs for characters to express their justifications for what they want to do. Election is often very funny in a black kind of way, in seeing the characters going to great lengths to delude themselves into justifying their selfish actions. And they refuse to learn anything from their mistakes. Most of us have been their ourselves at one time or another. Their is some commentary on high school life too. Tracy comments to herself that she thought she'd be happier after a very successful high school career, that her lack of friends was the price she had to pay for being "special". The film also pokes fun at the seriousness which administrators take themselves and their functions, and how teachers pontificate on picky little, ultimately unimportant things. Tammy also hits the nail on the head when she says that suspending students for skipping or bad behaviour is kind of ludicrous in that it gives the student just what they want (although she misses the idea that maybe the administration and teachers just want these bad actors out of their hair, so they can annoy their parents instead). The performances are first rate. Broderick is as good as I've seen him as the self-satisfied educator whose life spirals out of control. Witherspoon is the epitome of spunky, Reaganesque ruthlessness, someone who would drive a knife into your back believing it to be for your own good. She works harder than anyone else, and so deserves to receive what she desires. Klein is a riot as the eternally optimistic and generous jock, delivering a Keanu-Reeves-like impression of an innocent just happy to be alive, suspicious of no one, forgiving of everyone. Perhaps the revelation of the film is the work of Campbell, who delivers a complex and sympathetic performance of an unhappy girl who doesn't fit in with her school or restrictive middle-class community. Her speech at the election assembly is a model of apathetic cynicism. If you are expecting a high school romance, or a happy ending, Election might disappoint you, but if you can appreciate first class satire, this movie will go to the top of your class.   
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