Recovered Classic: Election

This is the film which got Ferris Bueller back to school. Well, sort of. Thirteen years after Matthew Broderick bunked off for the day in that 1980s comedy classic, the actor returned to the classroom, only this time he found himself on the other side of the desk.

Employing a very different style of humour to John Hughes’ 1986 movie, director Alexander Payne’s Election is a satirical caning set against the savagely immoral background of a student council election. Reese Witherspoon stars as impossibly perky teenager Tracy Flick, a serial over-achiever and alarmingly ambitious go-getter who all but has the student presidency of George Washington Carver High in the bag by virtue of the simple fact that she’s the only candidate.

Slightly put out by her non-stop progress, not to mention the fact that she got his colleague and best friend fired after having an affair with him, popular teacher Matthew Broderick decides that she needs dragging down a peg or three.

So he persuades dumb school football star and gloriously unsuitable candidate Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against her. It then becomes a three-horse race when Klein’s lesbian sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) also decides to run. She has equally dubious motives, her “who cares?” campaign motivated by a determination to get back at her injured brother when he steals her girlfriend.

But Broderick’s attempts to rig the election against Flick soon spiral out of control and his whole life seems to nosedive alarmingly, notably when he starts an affair with his wife’s best friend. Naturally, only one person is to blame for this shocking series of unfortunate events…Flick!

A marvellous vehicle for the often underrated Broderick (who still hasn’t been forgiven for Godzilla), his performance as the increasingly desperate and frustrated three-time Teacher of the Year is one of his finest, a wonderful portrayal of a man cracking up under the strain of ruining Flick’s plans.

The movie also shows Witherspoon at her wickedly enjoyable best as she attacks her role as the annoyingly eager and manipulative student (who bakes Pick Flick cup cakes to bolster her campaign) with a gloriously entertaining sense of character.

The second feature for director Alexander Payne, his bitingly satirical script uses an effective narrative style in which the story is told through the eyes of shifting narrators, moving from one main character to the next. The story can also be viewed as a sort of U.S. Presidential election in microcosm, complete with sex scandals, smear campaigns and dirty tricks.

All the characters are flawed in some way, but you unavoidably end up rooting for Broderick, and not just out of sympathy for the nasty bee sting he receives on his eyelid, which is just one of the ways in which his humiliations are milked for comedy. It’s not that Flick is portrayed as a villain in the true sense of the word, the script is merely stacked against her.

Based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, this is exhilarating stuff, a genuinely funny movie which stands up to repeat viewings, as much for the quality of its performances as the brilliance of its script.

David Lichtneker

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