Review of Swing Vote (2008) by Bobh — 09 Mar 2009

An extremely weak attempt at political satire that provides neither insight or entertainment. The premise is beyond absurd although I'm more than willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of a good plot and intriguing character development.

Sadly the execution of this already hackneyed script makes the preposterous premise the least of this movie's faults. Without spoiling too much (not that there's much to spoil), this movie essentially tries to get some cheap laughs at the expense of the world's easiest targets - politician.

The makers of this film spend an agonizingly long two hours trying to tell us something we've known ever since we hit the age of reason - that our elected officials and their cronies are deceptive charlatans who will say or do anything to get a necessary vote.

Wow, what an incredibly profound observation. The movie's greatest fault, however, lies with its unsympathetic, unappealing, bland cast of characters. The screw-up dad/precocious child tandem has already been beaten to death in myriad other films and television programs but "Swing Vote" fails to present even a moderately intriguing father-and-daughter duo with the tired old forumla.

Costner's Bud character isn't a lovable screw-up. He's an idiotic, lazy, criminal alcoholic who is incapable of providing for his daughter both tangibly and emotionally and quite frankly does not mature intellectually or aesthetically or undergo any positive character development until the final five minutes of the film when he improbably transforms into a hyper-concered citizen who moderates presidential debates.

Ridiculous. Equally odious is Madeline Carroll's character, an impossibly intelligent child who spends the entire film carrying on like the spawn of Satan, constantly screaming at and berating her roustabout father to the point of insufferability as well as acting like a general smartass to every other adult she encounters.

A note to Touchstone Pictures - smart kids aren't cute when they're constantly acting snarky, bitchy, and mean-spirited. Kelsey Grammer, Nathan Lane, and Dennis Hopper try their best with the massive pile of excrement that was handed to them and their efforts are the only reason this movie doesn't get a zero from me.

Still, they fail just as this movie fails. Paula Patton plays an irrelevant role and acts as a quasi-love interest for Costner's character that goes nowhere. The chronically unfunny George Lopez also has a minor, exceedingly pointless part too.

I think Nana Visitor from Deep Space Nine was also in it for about eight seconds but I was too busy digging around for a rope to strangle myself with by that point in the movie. I'd rather watch Battlefield Earth a million times over than be subjected to viewing even a scene from this horror show again.

Stay away.