ELECTION (1999 - Cert 15)

Film Four is always good for chucking a little nugget my way. And so it was again, when I came across Election, the film where it all started to go right for director Alexander Payne. A lot of praise has been heaped on him of late for The Descendants (and Oscars in fact, one for his writing credit and a couple of nominations for best director and best film). I must admit that I've not yet seen that film, but it was Sidways which really put Payne on the map for me. A real man's rom-com, with a sneery, self-deprecating quality, something that I'm told is a feature of all of his films (except perhaps Jurassic Park 3, for which he has a writing credit - invested factoid of the day). That is one of the main reasons why I approached Election with high hopes.

High hopes that were thankfully met.

In today's politically troubled times, don't be put off by the title, it's not the sort of democratic process that you might fear. Instead it centres on a campaign to become High School President in full-on suburban Omoha. Matthew Broderick is Jim McAllister, teacher of the year who is in charge of the whole process. A very young Reese Witherspoon is Tracy Flick, irritating class boffin, know-it-all, overly ambitious, self centred but yet still popular, and is also the only candidate for President. That is until McAllister decides to get involved, and to teach Tracy a bit of a lesson, and convinces polite, popular and frankly dim, football hero Paul Metzler (Chris Klein - yes, Oz from American Pie) to run against her. You don't need to be a post-graduate in genre convention to know that things don't turn out quite how everyone would expect.

The high school election thing, particular to us reserved Brits, is a strange idea, and the oddness and unfamiliarity does serve well when it comes to comedy, but it has to be said that the plot isn't really the driving force of why the film works so well. It serves as a traffic policeman trying to keep erratic drivers in revved-up and unreliable vehicles on the straight and narrow. The drivers and cars in this case being the characters and the writing. Payne is mischievous in how he structures the film. It veers this way and that, you are never really sure who the narrative is fully focused on, therefore you never really know who you are meant to be behind. He also serves up some nutty, unpredictable and odd personas up on screen. The casting of Broderick is a master stroke. He still looks stupidly young (he would have been mid-late 30's at the time of this film), and you can still see him as Ferris causing chaos. Here though he is the institution, he is the bad guy. He's no Rooney though, there is still a cheeky rebellious side to his character, without it there wouldn't be an opposition to Tracy and the film wouldn't go anywhere. What you are effectively left with is Mr Bueller, this is what may have happened to Ferris (in fact this may make a superb double bill with Ferris). I've never been overly convinced by Broderick in the acting stakes but he is very good in this. Even when things start to go really wrong for his character, at home as well as at school, he proves that he is able to do the emotion as well as the cheeky, spritely joviality. 

Witherspoon is a strange one. Somehow, I really like her, yet when I look at her filmography, I realise that she hasn't really done anything that I really like, nothing that I consider much good anyway. Walk the Line I hear you say, yes she was decent in it, but it was predictably generic and that lessened her role. Water for Elephants? Ok, again, she was decent, but the film is instantly forgettable. So why do I like her? That question doesn't matter any more, because I have found a reason - Election. Despite her character being so nasty and irritating, she does it in an over the top and funny way, you can't help but like her even though you know that this character should be despised. Part of the appeal is that she isn't afraid to make herself look stupid, she's an attractive girl, but she will happily make stupid faces, chuck herself about and gurn until the cows come home. It's a performance that worked and got her noticed, she received a Golden Globe Nomination. It clearly helped set her on the path she is firmly on now.  

Witherspoon and Broderick are backed up nicely by Klein (doing the same thing he did in American Pie, safe and steady), Jessica Campbell as Metzler's vengeful and possibly lesbian sister Tammy, Phil Reeves doing the headmaster thing very well and Mark Harelik as McAllister's disgraced friend and former colleague. All of them, chipping in very well with humour, twisted bitterness and occasional oddities. 

Payne really gets the best out of his cast, but it's also helped by the skilled writing (he was nominated at the Oscars for best adapted screenplay). The snappy dialogue, internal monologues and voiceovers all all perfectly pitched, the laughs keep coming and the story zips along nicely. Diablo Cody is getting a lot of plaudits for her screenplay style in recent years, but it seems to me that Payne was doing it a long time before she ever was, and arguably, much better. 

If you've not seen it, it may be that this film passes you by, lost in the limbo of late night showings on Channel 4. Don't let it, seek it out, it's well worth it.