Posted: 12:37 am
August 1, 2008
'I am ashamed," says Bud, Kevin Costner's character in the brain-dead political satire/tear-jerker "Swing Vote." While we appreci ate your honesty, Kevin, please don't hog all the credit.
For starters, there are the screenwriters who filched the plot of the 1939 movie "The Great Man Votes" without credit and dumbed it down into their nonsensical commentary on the 2000 election - sort of Frank Capra by way of Larry the Cable Guy.
And then there are the endless celebrities playing themselves in dubious cameos - including Arianna Huffington announcing, "Something tells me Franklin and Jefferson are looking down and smiling."
If the Founding Fathers were watching this movie, I think they'd be more likely to join the people at the screening I attended in booing. This would-be civics lesson is such an appalling view of American democracy that it could be used as a recruiting film by al Qaeda.
Costner plays Bud (his name turns out to be one of countless character plugs), who's so drunk on Election Day that his long-suffering daughter Molly (newcomer Madeline Carroll) attempts to cast his vote for him.
Because of a technical glitch - and through an unbelievable contrivance by the writers - Bud is given a chance 10 days hence to recast what will be the deciding vote in the presidential election.
Soon the media - this is the sort of movie where Mary Hart of "Entertainment Tonight" scores a scoop - descends on tiny Texico, NM, followed by the candidates.
Before you know it, Bud is sharing, well, Budweisers with the commander in chief (Kelsey Grammer), a smug Republican, as well as hanging out with the Democratic standard bearer, a Vermont liberal played by Dennis Hopper as if he were waiting for a pay envelope at the end of each take.
Their campaign managers - Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane, respectively - are so desperate to sew up a win, they pressure the candidates to abandon long-held positions by their parties based on incoherent utterances by the apolitical Bud.
Subsequently, the GOP embraces conservation and gay marriage, while the Democrats produce TV ads attacking immigration and abortion (children disappear in puffs of smoke in the latter).
If you ask me, Costner's charm disappeared in a puff of smoke long ago, but that doesn't discourage him and director Joshua Michael Stern from indulging in movie-star hubris that bloats the movie well past the two-hour mark.
Bud sings in a Willie Nelson tribute band (Willie himself shows up), sort of romances a TV reporter (Paula Patton) and becomes the first unemployed drunk to be chosen as People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive."
The whole movie builds toward a climactic presidential debate moderated by Bud. He delivers a lengthy speech in which he calls both candidates "great men" - contradicting everything we've seen - then the camera cuts away. We never learn for whom Bud finally votes.
One character aptly cites the famous quote from philosopher George Santayana, "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Ladies and gentlemen, "Swing Vote," from the star who gave you "Waterworld" and "The Postman."
SWING VOTE
This Bud's not for you.
Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG- 13 (profanity, drinking, drug use). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the First and 62nd Cinemas, others.
