The Campaign
A congressman with a history of sex scandals faces off against a Republican challenger hand-picked and financed by two billionaires looking out for their corporate interests.
Just to be clear: The Campaign is a comedy, not a docudrama.
Directed by Jay Roach, who guided the Austin Powers franchise and Meet the Parents as well as the HBO political movies Recount and Game Change, The Campaign seeks to satirize the electoral process and finds some success.
Will Ferrell draws on previous performances — specifically, his character in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and his stage turn as President George W. Bush — to portray Cam Brady, a North Carolina Democrat who thinks he is running unchallenged for his fifth term in Congress.
When his approval ratings dive after his latest indiscretion goes public, an opportunity is seen by industrialists Wade and Glenn Motch (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow as a thinly veiled fictional version of the real-life Koch brothers).A candidate of their choosing, with the right grooming and talking points, could win the district and spearhead their plan to establish legal Chinese sweatshops in the States.
So, in Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), the less-than-favorite son of a Motch crony (Brian Cox), they find the right combination of patriotism, enthusiasm and naive malleability. After a hard-as-nails campaign manager (Dylan McDermott) is deployed, Marty’s cardigans are replaced with suits, his wife is given a Katie Couric bob and his prized pugs are sidelined in favor of less “ communist” pets.
The Campaign seems strongest when utter absurdity reigns, as when a photo op with an infant goes violently wrong or when the audience is introduced to a family maid (the sharpest gag).
Roach also tries to include among the high jinks a lesson about the workings of modern politics. Though informative and refreshingly thoughtful, the idea comes off as clunky.
The biggest problem lies not in the work of the creators but in the actions of politicians in the real world.Unfortunately, where ridiculous foibles and election stunts are concerned, most everything short of a baby being punched in the face has already been done.
overall it sucked
The Bourne Legacy
Bourne, Again” it isn’t. But don’t blame Jeremy Renner (“The Town”), who is thoroughly credible as a kind of chemical-biological sibling of Matt Damon’s glorious Jason Bourne, who makes an appearance in “The Bourne Legacy” in an old photo.
When the first Damon “Jason Bourne” film “The Bourne Identity” opened in 2002, James Bond was on life support, and Damon’s Bourne seemed like the ideal replacement. He was also a perfect metaphor for a new generation: an almost child-like man who was also a deadly killing machine.
This new “Bourne” movie, which takes place during the setting of “The Bourne Ultimatum” and features a scene with Joan Allen’s Pamela Landy, recycles elements from the earlier films, even the dreaded shaky-cam visuals, but almost nothing sticks.
We meet Aaron Cross, Renner’s even more advanced “model,” in the Alaskan wilderness where Cross scales a mountain alone and seems impervious to cold. These scenes, in which he meets a fellow experiment billed as “outcome #3 (Oscar Isaac), have a genuinely nice kicker, involving a wolf, a drone and a missile.
But then come endless scenes featuring growling men in suits (Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach, Edward Norton, etc.) and researchers in lab jackets, including Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz in the “girl” role), spewing the sort of super-specialized, high-tech macho jargon that has marked this series and is supposed bowl us over because the actors use their “important” voices. Meh.
Director Tony Gilroy, who penned the previous “Bourne” films as well as this effort, has run out of ideas, and as talented and physically capable as Renner is, he does not bring what Damon brought to the table. Unlike Damon’s Bourne, who was an unstoppable assassin in the unlikely form of an All-American boy, Renner’s Cross is a more damaged, feral figure — an All-American misfit and a bit of a Frankenstein monster made out of what was leftover from a war veteran severely injured by an I.E.D. He might have been an equally gripping character. But he doesn’t get the chance, and all the talk about blue pills and green pills just made me want to take a pill. A chase scene in absurdly crowded Manila streets featuring a motorbike and motorcycles is terrifically shot and choreographed, but how many times have we seen this in a Bourne film or a Bond film for that matter?
As someone remarks of Cross, this new movie “runs out of brain.” After 135 minutes of it, so did I.