| 100 |
Boston Globe
An invigoratingly mordant comedy that proves that Alexander Payne's rambunctious debut, "Citizen Ruth," was no fluke.
|
| 100 |
Slate
American satire rarely comes more winning than Election, an exuberantly caustic comedy that shows the symbiotic relationship between political go-get-'em-ism and moral backsliding.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.
|
| 100 |
Film.com
One of the funniest, shrewdest, smartest movies in recent memory.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
A wonderful, piercing and hilarious examination of high school politics and how bitter and ruinous it can become.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Examiner
With Election, Payne announces himself as one of the keenest purveyors of the scattered pieces that once was an American morality.
|
| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
Alexander Payne's scathing, subtle, and complexly funny tragicomedy builds a perfect, off-kilter universe--it's a first cousin to "Rushmore."
|
| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
This is a nearly flawless little film, a cheerful nightmare that knows just where it wants to go and uses precisely calibrated comic effects to get there.
|
| 90 |
Mr. Showbiz
Election is a bracingly intelligent adult comedy that shrewdly captures adolescence.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
Resonates with the fluorescent horror of real-life high school, something few movies about this generation have managed to successfully capture.
|
| 90 |
Variety
Brandishes the sort of intelligent wit and bracing nastiness that will make it more appealing to discerning adults than to teens who just want to have fun.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
Wickedly funny, scathingly original new comedy.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Alexander Payne is a director whose satire is omnidirectional. He doesn't choose an easy target and march on it. He stands in the middle of his story and attacks on all directions.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
The actors are solid at every position, but Broderick, who seems to get better with each performance, is especially good at playing the impulsively self-destructive yet sympathetic loser.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
When it comes to eloquently telling it like it is, Election puts the nation's political pundits to shame.
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
Election has the sharpest satire of any teen movie made in years. Like the best lampoons, it attacks by exaggerating reality ever-so-slightly and targeting a broad range of subjects.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
A terrific work of political and social satire set in a Nebraska high school that has the intelligence of (the less coherent) "Rushmore," while painting a much darker picture of politics and human relationships.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
Election is a deft dark comedy with a resemblance to "Rushmore." It's smart no matter what.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Witherspoon's broad, obsessive comic performance is bound to get the most attention, but Broderick does the best work of his career, finding an affecting spot between the all-purpose defiance of Ferris Bueller and the put-upon foil of his recent work.
|
| 80 |
Salon.com
Wickedly funny, an ode to youthful overachievers that's as blackhearted as "Rushmore" was gently sentimental.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
A fine, near-seamless film that finally suffers slightly from an inability to wrap up its tale.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, sees the lives of these suburban students and teachers through a prism of absurdity that refracts more truth than any straightforward telling.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
At best, the humour in Election is perceptive, nasty, pointed, and lets no one off its barbed hook, not even the audience. In other words, it's a lovely piece of satire, made all the more relevant by the setting.
|
| 70 |
LA Weekly
Election is finally, necessarily, as much about sex as it is about politics -- wanting it, getting it, losing it.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Surprise! An intelligent, well-written high school story.
|
| 70 |
Newsweek
Director Payne, who adapted Tom Perrotta's novel with Jim Taylor, has an authentically dire view of human behavior, which he expresses in crisp, edgy and sometimes startlingly raunchy style.
|
| 70 |
Dallas Observer
Happily, this irreverent, sharply observant comedy sweeps us into the maelstrom too. Amid the glut of teen movies rolling out of the studios every week, Election deserves special attention.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
The treatment of this touchy material is impressive, neither gratuitous nor mincing, but this satirical comedy doesn't really go anywhere.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Often distastefully juvenile.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Marc Caro
Entertaining but frustratingly uneven.
|
| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Broderick and Witherspoon give perfectly matched performances at the head of a first-rate cast.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
The film never finds a confident tone: it's pitched as a satire, but seems to have no real targets.
|
| 40 |
TNT RoughCut
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
|
