Election (1999)

I will admit right now that this will be more of a rant than a review. I don't know what it is, but I have always had this issue where if I don't like the main characters, I don't like the movie or book. TV shows are sometimes okay, but only if they have a lot of good supporting characters. Like the Big Bang Theory, I can dislike one of the main characters, but there are enough characters that I like to make up for it...sometimes.

This movie I barely managed to finish, because I didn't like a single character. Not one.

The three main characters are a perfectionist student with daddy-issues, a hypocritical teacher with a diluted sense of justice, and a stereotypical, dumb jock.

While I found the perfectionist Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon, annoying. I recognized her character as being not that far from students who do exist. Almost every high school has that one student that seems obsessed with being involved in school activities, that cannot seem to keep their hand down when a question is asked, and seems to choose activities and clubs based on what will look good on a college application over what they have actual interests in. I knew people like this. I didn't really get along with them, but I knew them.

The teacher, played by Broderick, I hated. To better explain, I feel I should summarize the movie some so those who haven't seen it will understand.

Tracy Flick, the perfectionist, comes from a dysfunctional family. Her father is absent and her mom is pretty much obsessed with living out her own dreams through Tracy, constantly pushing her to succeed and treating anything less that a perfect success as a failure. As a result, she acts in a manner that keeps other students from wanting to hang out with her. A teacher at the school, Broderick's character's best friend, takes interest in her. While I don't think he intentionally set out to start a relationship with her, he should have realized that she was a kid looking for a father-figure. But, he was in a sort of mid-life crisis. He wanted to be young and in high school again. And he felt under-appreciated by his wife. Tracy helped with that. They slept together. He sent her a love letter, her mom found it and he was fired.

Broderick's character puts all the blame on Tracy. He blames her for "seducing" his friend, even though she is 16. He blames her for his friend getting fired, even though his friend sent the note and it was her mom who went to the principal. He blames her for his friend's marriage falling apart, even though it takes two to tango, so they say. Not to mention, if the marriage was healthy to begin with he wouldn't have strayed. Not blaming his wife, but she isn't totally blameless. Not to say Tracy is blameless, she knew he was married. The teacher then decides to make it his mission to treat her horribly. He ignores her in class. He is rude to her. And when she runs for President, he manipulates a student to run against her. Considering the fact that he believed Tracy was horrible for manipulating his friend, which she didn't really do, the fact he would do it to hurt her and that it was okay when he did it was really annoying for me.

(As a note, if you haven't seen the movie and plan to, for some reason, the next 3 paragraphs should be skipped. Start again at "The supporting characters...")

But then, he gets even more hypocritical when he starts an affair with his friend's wife even though he is married. And yet he still persecutes Tracy at school. Even going so far as to try and rig the election so that she won't win. I wonder perhaps, if his continued persecution wasn't his own way of putting the blame off of himself. If he admitted that Tracy wasn't all to blame for his friend's affair, that would mean that he was partially to blame for his own affair.

He then gets fired for rigging the election, his wife finds out he cheated and he ends up leaving town in disgrace.

Years later he sees Tracy, and he still blames her for everything. Including his own demise. He never takes responsibility for his own actions. She didn't either really, but she didn't deny her actions either.

The supporting characters annoyed me just as much. The jock was kind-hearted, you could say. But he wasn't so much kind-hearted as completely naive and brainless. He didn't seem to understand anything that was going on around him. He didn't see he was being manipulated by the teacher or his girlfriend. He didn't figure out that perhaps his sister was upset with him dating her ex-friend, who was actually his sister's ex-girlfriend. He just didn't know, he just didn't think.

His sister, a lesbian who was in love with her friend who she briefly dated. But the friend said she was just experimenting and they break up. His sister then runs in an anti-campaign to annoy her ex who is now dating her brother. She then makes sure to get herself kicked out of school so she can go to an all-girls school. I wouldn't mind all that, but in the process she treats her family pretty badly. Including her brother, who didn't actually know his girlfriend was his sister's ex, and who just wanted her to be happy.

Anyway, sufficed to say that I did not like the movie. The characters seemed like stock characters for the most part, and Broderick's character seemed entirely unrelatable and dislikeable to me. And the whole movie seemed to be characters whose only motivation was "only what I want matters, who cares how it effects others, and if people are hurt in the process it is either not my fault or not my problem." Except the jock, who was just an idiot.

I haven't been rating things with stars or " x out of y", I wonder if I should. At this point, I will just say that it is not a movie I would recommend to anyone.

#election #1999 #movie #notrecommended