The Campaign

The Campaign, by Jay Roach, 2012

The circus that American politics has become over the last decade has just been begging to be turned into the most ridiculous comedy imaginable. All the controversies, sex scandals, and embarrassing gaffes we've been witness to from our governors, congressmen, etc. have provided a goldmine of comedic opportunities. Just watch The Daily Show and laugh and laugh (and cry a little), and you'll see it's true. Now, with Jay Roach's The Campaign, we're finally getting that movie. And hey, it's pretty good.

The Campaign is about a vicious North Carolina Congressional race between two inept buffoons. Will Ferrell is Cam Brady, the current Congressman, who doesn't seem to care about governing, so much as using his position to get lots of money and sex. After he's caught in the act, the "Motch Brothers", two billionaire siblings (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) who use their vast resources to manipulate the government at their whim, decide to find a new candidate to act as their pawn in office. That man is Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), a small town tour guide, an effeminate, dimwitted but good natured weirdo, perhaps not the ideal candidate.

What follows is a campaign consisting entirely of increasingly vicious attacks, flubs, and sabotages, as both candidates fight dirty. Roach, Ferrell, Galifianakis and company use this opportunity to take a swing at as many of the bizarre and hilarious controversies that saturated our airwaves in the last few years as they can, and a few that are definitely made up, but don't feel entirely outside the realm of possibility.

As low brow as The Campaign gets, and it gets pretty low, it still manages to stay pretty clever. In fact, it's a little light on laughs at times, and stuff does fall flat, but I didn't mind because there were some pretty smart jokes in there too. I loved that not a single actual issue is brought up by either candidate in the whole movie, the entire campaign is just smear tactics. Roach has experience directing both smart political movies (HBO's Game Change and Recount) and the dumbest comedies imaginable (The Austin Powers movies, baby!), so it's fun watching him combine the two. There are even some handheld scenes that visually mimic his HBO movies.

I'm on record as a big fan of both Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, and they're both having a good time here. The supporting cast is good too, including SNL's Jason Sudeikis as Ferrell's campaign manager, Dylan McDermott as the man the Motch Brothers assign to transform Marty Huggins into a viable candidate, Katherine LaNasa as Cam Brady's opportunistic wife.

I liked The Campaign. It's worth looking into, especially if you like the leads, because really, they're just doing what they do. If the Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis schticks make you laugh in other things, then it will work here. But in addition to these guys, you also have a pretty smart, satirical script that feels like, I don't know, one part The Daily Show and one part Talladega Nights.

Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

A good test you can give yourself to determine whether or not you would like Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie is:

1: Have you seen Tim & Eric before on TV or the internet?

2: Did you like what you saw?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, you just might enjoy their movie. These guys are the definition of the words "Not for Everyone". Over the years, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have made a career of their shorts, that often use amateur techniques that are indistinguishable from a 1980's VHS infomercial that you might find in a bin at a Salvation Army. Their comedy is surreal, obnoxious, subversive, and often will take a turn for the nightmarish. Their unique voice has also earned them the respect of pretty much everyone else who matters in the comedy world, if not the world at large.

Now Tim & Eric have taken their first step into the movie world, and it's every bit as strange and culty as you would expect. Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, is the story of Tim & Eric, playing themselves, who somehow got a billion dollars from Hollywood studios to make a movie. The movie that resulted, "Diamond Joe", starring a Johnny Depp impersonator in a suit made of diamonds, cost so much money that they were only able to shoot three minutes of it. They are held responsible by the studio heads, and must find a way to pay back the billion dollars. As luck would have it, they see a commercial where a man offers a billion dollars to anyone who can fix up his shopping mall.

Tim & Eric then form a PR firm called "DOBIS" (the origins of that name was one of my favorite bits), and set out to bring business back to a dilapidated shopping mall with used toilet paper stores and a sword shop whose owner doesn't actually want any business. The plot really makes little sense. It's just there to loosely tie together a bunch of weird characters and bizarre jokes.

So does it work? As someone who enjoys Tim & Eric, though I haven't watched a lot of them, I think a lot of it does. It's not perfect, but a lot of the jokes got me. For example, I really liked when they first meet the owner of the mall (Will Ferrell) and before they talk, they watch Top Gun together. When it's over, they watch it again. I also liked the showdown with the movie studio heads at the end. As I said, I laughed a bunch, though I didn't care for the scatological stuff, as bizarre as some of it was.

Tim & Eric are two comedians who really don't seem to care if they're making everybody laugh, or just themselves. I respect that attitude a lot. It's how they got their cult status in the first place. In their movie, they surround themselves with bigger stars (and frequent collaborators) who are similarly fearless and unconcerned with reaching everybody or just the few people like them. Supporting roles are filled by kindred spirits such as Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Forte, all fully willing to give themselves over to Tim & Eric's weird vision.

I think you should only watch this if you're a T&E fan already. They have 5 seasons worth of insane, surreal sketches, most of them posted on Youtube. You should check some out if you haven't, these guys actually work better in short bursts than they do at feature length. If you've watched their Adult Swim show and approve, you might find some enjoyment in the Billion Dollar Movie, though I can't imagine someone unaware of these guys making it through 90 minutes of their antics.

Everything Must Go

Putting a comedy actor in a dramatic role is not a new idea, and it should come as no surprise by now when it works. Of course these actors are good at drama. Comedy is hard. The real risk comes in how seriously these comedy actors wish to be taken. The best of the dramas starring comedians come across as movies they really cared about and wanted to be involved in. The worst (I'm looking at you, Robin Williams!) come across as desperate bids to be taken seriously. Thankfully, Everything Must Go is in the former category.

Everything Must Go is a film directed by Dan Rush, based on a short story by Raymond Carver. Carver's minimalist stories are perhaps best known by film lovers for providing the raw material for Robert Altman's classic ensemble epic, Short Cuts. Everything Must Go stars Will Ferrell as Nick Halsey, a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon, loses his job, and comes home to find his wife has changed the key to his house and thrown all of his belongings onto the front lawn. His AA sponsor, Frank (Michael Pena) is a cop , who is able to pull some strings and give him six days to clear his lawn, by registering it as a yard sale. Over the days, he finds companionship in a lonely kid whose mom is busy as a hospice worker, and a pregnant woman who has just moved in across the way, and begins the steps to putting his life back together by completely letting go of his old life.

It's fun to watch Nick let go. He starts off unwilling to sell any of his belongings, not even a half-used bottle of mouthwash, but as the movie progresses and he has one small revelation about himself after another, his yard sale gains momentum. One of my favorite comedy stars, Will Ferrell brings a lot of control to his performance. His character is a funny guy, but he's not Will Ferrell funny. There are laughs, but they come naturally, and often at his expense.

Though Carver's stories were short and sparse, there is a recognizable element of his work found in Everything Must Go. We as viewers get to eavesdrop on Nick and his neighbors in some of their most private moments, in an almost voyeuristic way. Also, there's a scene when Nick reaches a low point, and contacts a girl he barely remembers, who wrote a nice message in his high school yearbook. Played compassionately by Laura Dern, she recognizes Nick's desperation and helps him remember why she wrote what she wrote. That scene itself could have almost been a Carver story.

I really liked Everything Must Go. It had a positive, almost Buddhist message without being preachy. It really dragged its protagonist through the mud, took him all the way to rock bottom, but also gave him a clean break. I related to it personally in some small sense. I'm not a drunk or anything, but I do have a TON of stuff, and I do have a real hard time getting rid of it. I've had to let go of some fairly dear possessions the last couple of times I moved, including many childhood toys, and my MAD magazine collection. It's not easy to do, but it does feel quite liberating once the deed is done. Everything Must Go made me remember that feeling and think maybe it would be good for me to lose some more of my junk.