The Campaign (2012)

Until it takes a late left turn into conventionality, Jay Roach’s political satire The Campaign has one of the bleakest world views of any mainstream comedy I’ve ever seen. It has absolutely zero respect for the very idea of American politics; painting it as a world of nothing but greedy corporations who buy dunderheaded candidates that hurl insults and indignities at each other until the election itself, and even that is probably fixed. It’s rather bold in that way, until it cops out at the last minute and goes for the feel-good ending. I understand that The Campaign has to please audiences or else it is sure to flounder, but for 80 minutes the film is a shockingly dark ride through an absurd alternate political universe that may not be that far from the truth. The raunchy, R-rated comedy throughout is just a façade meant to mask the true horrors within.

The film chronicles a congressional election between Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) and Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis). The former is a Democrat and the latter is a Republican, but their political allegiances are entirely beside the point; they might as well be named Scumbag A and Scumbag B. However, Marty was not always this way. Before the election he was nothing but a friendly tour guide in his small North Carolina town before being plucked from the streets and essentially drafted into politics. He is saddled with a creepy campaign manager (Dylan McDermott) and is bought out by a couple of corporate suits (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) who want to take outsourcing to the next level. He is blissfully unaware of this at first, but slowly he is seduced by the filthy, filthy world of campaigning.

Much of the film is just a comedy of endless one-upsmanship, as Ferrell and Galifianakis attempt to sabotage the other’s campaign as frequently as possible. (There is a good amount of self-sabotage here too, make no mistake.) There are a series of debates in which neither candidate says anything of substance, and the attack ads slowly become more and more personal. All this happens while the rest of country—including cameos by Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan and Joe Scarborough among others—looks on in horror.

In spite of all the atrocities seen onscreen, The Campaign is a very funny movie from beginning to end, and at times uproariously so. Ferrell and Galifianakis are perfectly cast as the dueling dunces at the film’s center, and the audience can only watch in horror as the two of them sink lower and lower in pursuit of victory. The Campaign is not meant to take place in the real world—in that case, both of these candidates would wind up in jail by the end—but this heightened universe only makes the darker touches pack a greater punch. For 90 percent of its running time, this is a suffocatingly grim comedy, though many may not realize it with all the raucous, filthy jokes that Roach and company throw at the audience scene after scene. This onslaught of sophomoric comedy is probably necessary to make the movie watchable at all, or else it might have been too much to bear.

And yet, The Campaign had a chance to leave a deep, stinging impact on the audience with the ending. More often than not, Roach—along with screenwriters Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell—is able to pull off a nifty little trick; he’s able to fool us into thinking we’re watching just another funny R-rated comedy when really he’s created a scathing attack on modern politics and America as a whole. With one reveal late in the film, it seems like The Campaign is going to take us all of the way into the abyss and become one of the most daringly honest comedies in recent memory. Then, tragically, it backs off and goes with the obvious, easy ending. On one hand it’s a relief; would it really be a pleasing experience if the movie ended that way? On the other hand, it keeps the film from being as great as it could have been. The alternative conclusion may not have pleased audiences on the whole, but it would have elevated The Campaign from “Hollywood comedy” to “film with ideas.” There’s still enough venom to go around, but the film makes the mistake of not quite committing as much as it should.

Problematic ending aside, The Campaign is by and large a hilarious comedy that has more going on upstairs than most of its brethren. Galifianakis and Ferrell are both playing variations on parts they’ve played before—Cam Brady is a sleazier George W.-type while Marty Huggins is essentially a slight twist on his “Seth Galifianakis” character—but both are able to turn them into more than mere sketch characters. Roach and his actors understand the two protagonists (?) and what drives them to do all the despicable things that they do. It may bail on its convictions in the home stretch, but The Campaign is an unusually bold comedy that isn’t afraid to go to the next level. Until it is.

Grade: B