Review of Election (1999) by Ahmedaiman9999 — 21 Oct 2018

At first glance, Election may appear to be just another high school flick, but it's actually far from being so. Alexander Payne's superb screenplay asks a plethora of surprisingly difficult moral questions. It also features some very very compelling and sophisticated characters played by equally brilliant actors who delivered remarkable performances, especially Matthew Broderick's. You won't appreciate the incredibly nuanced characters until you think about them, and their actions more than once after finishing the movie. Add to that the fact that Payne's intelligent script never tried to rely on tired exposition techniques to flesh out his characters, but instead he used a lot of subtle references and nuances to make us identify with these characters even without the slightest reliance on sentimentality. That said, I think Tracy Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon, should have been way more sympathetic, because I felt almost zero pity for her!

The dark humor enriches the satirical aspect of the movie, but halfway through the movie the tone changed a great deal and became so dark. The thing that made the tone inconsistent with the first and the third act. Payne heavy usage of V.O.s and freeze frames gave the movie its own style, and also made it feel more lighthearted.

I loved how the movie made all its characters flawed, but in a way that really adds more depth to these characters, and made them fully-developed and lifelike. Whether it is a main, or side character, each one of them will resonate with the viewer in many different ways.

The movie, however, delves into some characters more than needed. As I think there are a couple of characters' sub-plots that could have been completely cut from the script without affecting anything essential to the main plot.

The denouement was very rushed and unfocused that made me think that the movie actually run out of steam. Fortunately, the ending was quite good, if not as clever as the rest of the movie.

(7.