The Campaign (2012)

For the first time in my life, I drove to a movie theatre and laid down money to see a film starring Will Ferrell. Having been a huge fan of his work on "Saturday Night Live," it's been my disappointed belief ever since that Ferrell's genius is limited to bursts of no more than 10 minutes, some sort of Faustian bargain to make him the funniest guy on the planet in exchange for the brevity of wit that would forever curse him to never carry a film.

Believe me, I tried to laugh at Farrell's movies, though I never trusted him - or them - enough to see them in the theatres. I decided that when Farrell is not the focus, such as in "Old School," his film work seems to stand up better. And as a news and media guy, I've wondered again and again why the beloved "Anchorman" is so not funny to me.

So I don't know what possessed me to want to take a chance on "The Campaign," but I did. And either I was exhausted when I saw it or just genuinely open to it, because I really enjoyed it. Like a lot. Like more than I'd like to admit. Co-starring the also funny-quirky Zach Galifianakis,"The Campaign" is a sly satire on the absurdity of the political campaign season in America.

Ferrell plays congressman Cam Brady, a smug political asshole preparing to run unopposed for reelection to his North Carolina seat, who is shockingly and suddenly challenged for it by a pouf of a man named Marty Huggins, a doughy, unimposing family man who's backed by a super pac with dubious capitalist and corporate interests to take the seat. Huggins, of course, is genuinely interested in helping his community and is unaware of the source of his growing power to challenge Brady.

The campaign season becomes a game of one absurd one-upsmanship, with Brady subjecting Huggins to sleazy acts of embarrassment and Huggins learning to dig back thanks to the the arrival of Dylan McDermott as a macho mercenary of a campaign manager, who begins his work by first replacing everything in Huggins' home to improve his image, even going so far as to exchange the two family pugs for golden labs, which test market better with voters.

The personal attacks on each other go to such great and childish lengths that I wouldn't dare spoil them for you by listing them here, because the fun of watching "The Campaign" is knowing that each act of retaliation will only be more ridiculous than the last and waiting to see what specifically we will get.

The film has a supporting cast that isn't being advertised enough in the shadow of its two huge lead stars, but support work by McDermott, Jason Sudeikis (as Brady's campaign manager),and Dan Ackroyd and John Lithgow (as scheming and dubious revenue sources to the Huggins campaign) are just additional reasons why this particular film holds up a little better than Ferrell movies in the past.

I've read more negative reviews of "The Campaign" than positive, and what I've found interesting is that most of the negative reviews express disappointment over the fact that the film had the opportunity to be a sharp satire on American politics but wasn't. They propose that to see it as such is to be creating subtext that director Jay Roach never truly put there. What movie were they watching?

Take it from me: that satire is there, and perhaps the reason I liked "The Campaign" is because it's one of the only times I can think of when Ferrell's on-screen insanity has been grounded by something truly topical. His eccentric characters are always to be laughed at because they are so out there. But you can't watch this film without nodding your head with the familiarity that Cam Bradys exist right now, everywhere, all over America. They are perfectly-coiffed, handsome, hollow shells of men being filled by ideas by those who put up the dollars to fund their campaigns. And only the insane level of farce that this film goes to can achieve a sense of comedy when, in reality, lesser versions of the same games are actually being played out there, and they are not funny at all.

Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman is wise to point out, I think, that director Jay Roach is not one of Ferrel's traditional collaborators and that Roach has previously directed the political HBO films "Recount" and "Game Change." So although this is also the man who brought us Austin Powers, he knows what he's doing when it comes to exploring the American political landscape in terms of the aspects of it that make us scratch our heads.

By the time "The Campaign" is over, we reinforce the idea that some of our elections are choices between bad and worse, and Roach ultimately calls voters on the carpet, too, for the decisions they ultimately make. And for me, the stroke of genius to lay a foundation of truly relevant and grounded social satire underneath Ferrell's largely unaltered buffoonery was enough to make me say that I paid for a Ferrell movie...and I liked it!

3.0 out of 4