Movie Review: The Campaign

Plot: After a scandal hurts Cam Brady’s fifth consecutive run at Congress, two CEO’s influence dim witted Marty Huggins, son of a popular retired congressman, to run against Brady so that they can have control over the North Carolina District.

Comedy is a tough gig to keep going strong at. When you look at the careers of great comedians such as Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, they all have one thing in common; their careers get worse as they get older. How long can a fast speaking, hot tempered Eddie Murphy character continue to be funny? How long can a yelling, high pitched, uneducated slacker Adam Sandler character continue to be funny? And how long can an over confident, yelling while stringing a bunch of nonsense words together Will Ferrell character continue to be funny? In my opinion all of these guys have had their time. It’s not their fault, they are funny but after five and six movies of the same thing, they lose their punch. Zach Galafanakis is right on track with the rest of them. Sure, he’s hilarious in The Hangover, but did anyone else think that the second time around the gig was kind of up? And Due Date was funny as well, but as you watched didn’t you think to yourself, “He’s just like Alan from The Hangover”. So when trailers began to run for The Campaign, I thought to myself that this would be it for Galafanakis. I was already convinced that Ferrell would fall flat, but I still thought Zach had one more shot before his act gets old. Time will tell if that’s the case for Galafanakis, he and Owen Wilson have a film coming out, followed by The Hangover 3. But until then, he has at least gone out on a high note.

The film starts off with Ferrell’s character and I was surprised to find Ferrell funny again. Director Jay Roach was very smart about how he approached the film. First was giving it an “R” rating. The last Ferrell movie I enjoyed was Step Brothers, another “R” rated film. This gave Ferrell more range with his character since there would be no limitations.

The second thing Roach and the writers did was split it 60/40, as in Galafanakis was in the film sixty percent of the time compared to Ferrell’s forty, very smart because Ferrell can get overbearing quickly.

Ferrell doesn’t give any kind of miraculous performance, it’s the same thing we’ve seen a dozen times from him, it just happens to work this time around. He’s a sleazy congressman who gets caught having an affair after leaving a dirty voicemail on the wrong phone number. He has a cutthroat approach to the campaign doing anything it takes to win. I hope Ferrell continues to take this approach in his roles. He does better as an esemble. When I think of the films I like,I think of Old School, Anchorman and Step Brothers. All ensemble casts. His only solo film I liked was Talledega Nights. This is the way to go for him.

Galafanakis is the same story. I did find him to be the funnier of the two, but once again he is playing the same character we’ve seen before, only this time a bit dumber. His character Marty comes off charmingly dumb as he wrestles with who he is and who his campaign manager wants him to become. I don't know how they got through their scenes because his accent in the film is hilarious.

I found Dylann McDermott's character to be a nice surprise. McDermott plays Tim Wattley, Marty's campaign manager. Wattley is your typical “man in black” villain. I’m a fan of McDermott’s but he has never quite found his role after The Practice ended. I thought he was headed for a nice comeback with American Horror Story, but that show ended up taking a different turn. He has a nice dark comedy vibe to him that he should pursue more of. I felt like they could have worked him into more of the story, but he was definitely a bright spot for the film.

The third thing Roach and the writers did that was clever, was making the film appealing to two different crowds. If you don’t keep up with politics, you will enjoy this film as a simple comedy. If you do keep up with politics, you may enjoy the film a little more as they have thrown in a lot of references to things that are going on today. John Lithgow and Dan Akroyd play the Motch brothers, billionaire CEO’s who are loosely based off the Koch brothers who have been accused of paying millions to get people into Congress and more recently for paying $100 million dollars to have Paul Ryan put on the Republican ticket for Vice President. Had the film been too political or shoved one’s political stance down the audience’s throat, it could have been a turnoff, but they did a great job at balancing that.

The film was much better and much funnier than I could have hoped for. Enjoy it, it could be a while before we get a decent film out of either one of these guys anytime soon……I’m looking at you Anchorman 2 and Hangover 3.

Final Verdict: 7/10