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Swing Vote
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language
Starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, George Lopez, Madeline Carroll, Paula Patton, Judge Reinhold, Willie Nelson, Mare Winningham, and Richard Petty
Swing Vote follows the story of Bud Johnson, an apathetic, beer-slinging, lovable loser, who is coasting through a life that has passed him by. The one bright spot is his precocious, over-achieving twelve-year-old daughter Molly. She takes care of both of them, until one mischievous moment on Election Day, when she accidentally sets off a chain of events which culminates in the election coming down to one vote... her dad's. (Touchstone Pictures)
| GENRE(S): | Comedy |
| WRITTEN BY: |
Joshua Michael Stern
Jason Richman |
| DIRECTED BY: | Joshua Michael Stern |
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 13, 2009 Theatrical: August 1, 2008 |
| RUNNING TIME: | minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 22 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Bob H gave it a2:
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.
Jay H gave it a5:
The cast is very likable and Kevin Costner makes a surprisingly good redneck. The story however is so insanely far fetched that it is impossible to fully enjoy the film. It is such a silly premise. A waste of good talent.
Mark B. gave it an8:
Making imitation Alfred Hitchcock movies isn't all that hard to do (and many of us who have watched Brian DePalma's career over the last decade wish to God he'd go back to doing them), but making imitation Frank Capra movies...well, that's tough. Those who try to do so often forget that the final quarter of It's A Wonderful Life is really one of the darkest movies ever made (the better, more powerful and more radiant when Capra finally turns on the light), and so for every effort that works (like last year's lovely, fanciful The Astronaut Farmer from the Polish brothers, or the 1980 John Ritter gem Hero At Large, a charming unofficial redo of Meet John Doe) you get ten or so like 2001's The Majestic, which triple Capra's speechifying and sugar content while slowing his unerring sense of pace, which in the 1930s rivaled that of Howard Hawks' screwball comedies, to a near-comatose crawl. One reason Swing Vote works so well is that it doesn't sentimentalize its hero (if you can call him that), Bud Johnson; in the film's early scenes, his job loss is clearly not that of the economy or the system, but his own damn fault. (This movie is far more honest in its discussion of the immigration issue than this year's heavily manipulative indie smash The Visitor.) This gives Kevin Costner the opportunity to do what he does best: here, as in Bull Durham and The Upside of Anger, he plays a fundamentally OK but deeply flawed good guy, with the emphasis on flawed. His personal Jiminy Cricket (whom, thanks to his very heavily liquid diet, he's usually too woodenheaded to pay much heed to) is his conscientious, civic-minded daughter Molly (newcomer Madeleine Carroll, who, had this movie gotten better reviews or box office, would have been instantly set up as the next Abigail Breslin). She begs him to vote for the next President, but since he's busy proving why maybe the old practice of closing the bars on Election Day wasn't such a bad idea after all, she takes matters into her own small hands,with resulting complications that, while totally impossible to conceive 10 years ago, subsequent history has made just amusingly improbable now. The Electoral College renders Bud's one mere do-over vote the deciding factor in who takes the White House; as a result, the Republican incumbent (Kelsey Grammer) and his Democratic challenger (Dennis Hopper) and their respective campaign managers (Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane) go to absurd, often hilarious and occasionally chilling lengths to suck up to Bud and secure his loyalty. Those who slam Swing Vote's satire as being toothless forget that Claude Rains in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, while the villain, wasn't a bad person but a decent, idealistic one who got corrupted along the way...sadly, in almost 70 years the more things change the more they remain the same (a hard lesson for those of us who thought that John Edwards was the greatest guy in American politics only to recently learn that he's as human as the rest of us). That's why the evenhanded Swing Vote, in true Capra fashion, works as nicely as it does, even if, like me, you have issues with what it chooses to do and not do in its final 10 minutes; neither candidate (or campaign manager, somewhat surprisingly) is evil at all. Thus, even though Swing Vote scores some of its biggest points and laughs by parallelling Hopper's inability to relate to the so-called "common man" with John Kerry's, Michael Dukakis's and Walter Mondale's similar ineptitude, Grammer's GOP antagonist is, unlike the current office holder, charming, intelligent and silver-tongued (if a bit patronizing). In the Swing Vote universe there are no equivalents to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney or George W. you-know-who. Works for me!
Rev. Rikard gave it a4:
This film insults the political savy of sotherners, while melting the political process down into an oversimplified, sappy stew. Costner's "Bubba" gets old within ten minutes, which is about as long as the film should be.
Ally W gave it an8:
I did not have high expectations, but my wife and I loved this movie. Despite the outrageous premise, the movie was smart, funny, and had moving moments of profound depth. Good performances by the actresses playing Bud's daughter and ex-wife.
Jess E gave it an8:
Whether you like the movie or not depends on whether you like Costner or not. In this film he delivers a charming performance along with newcomer 12yr old Madeline Carroll. The film is funniest when it depicts the two campaigns trying to fit into Costner's character political opinions. No new ground broken here but it is a delightfullight hearted comedy that is worth seeing if you can break away from seeing the current Special effects action flicks over and over and over and over again. Don't people ever get tired of seeing a film so many times so soon. Evidently not. Catch Swing vote. It deserves an audience.
Evan C. gave it a7:
This was not a great movie, but it certainly was enjoyable with excellent acting. I think the critics were too harsh. Admittedly it is unplausible, but certainly not more unplausible than a lot of other inane action and sophomoric slapstick flicks this summer, which the critics seem to like better.
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