Election (R)
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This came out in 1999, and I guess I saw it on TV sometime in the early 2000s. I didn't remember anything really specific about it by the time I watched it on DVD in 2020 (on Election Day), which is when I'm writing this review. I should say, before I re-watched it, I expected to put my review in serio-comedy, and even after I watched it I deliberated a bit about whether to put it there, or comedy (as I ultimately went with), or maybe quirky.

Well, the movie is narrated by various characters, and I think it's kind of neat to get their inner thoughts instead of just, you know, not. (It's based on a book, which I haven't read, and books do tend to be better about providing characters' inner thoughts than movies do, so I expect that helped.) Anyway, it's set in a high school where a girl named Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is running for student council president. At first she's unopposed, but then a teacher named Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) encourages a popular guy named Paul Metzler to run against her. Soon after that, a girl named Lisa breaks up with Paul's sister, Tammy, and starts dating Paul. (Paul had no idea Lisa and Tammy had been together, or even that Tammy was into girls.) Out of spite, Tammy decides to run against Paul and Tracy, on a campaign platform of not caring about the election at all. That's the exact opposite of Tracy, who's always been an overachiever, and takes the election super-seriously. Paul himself falls somewhere in the middle. In general, he seems kind of clueless, but he's certainly the nicest person in the movie. Meanwhile... Jim makes some very bad decisions both in his personal life and his job, and his life goes steadily downhill, for reasons I don't want to get into.

So, like, a lot of stuff happens that I don't want to get into, actually. It's all kind of weird and pathetic, and darkly humorous. I guess I liked it, I mean I think it's a good movie. Not entirely my cup of tea, but good. And kind of disturbing. I dunno.