Mark Reviews Movies: IRRESISTIBLE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 25, 2020

Jon Stewart's takes on politics and media are definitely missed, especially in these times. He had a way of cutting to the core of a topic with a mixture of sarcasm and, when it was necessary, anger, but there was always a sense of hopeful or, depending on how bad things seemed, hopeless optimism beneath the humor and the outrage.

The opening act of Irresistible, which Stewart wrote and directed, has that aw-shucks sentiment of positivity. The system is bad. Hell, most of the systems are bad, but maybe, if we just look and think outside of those systems, we might find the answers in the simplicity of just being decent people, behaving in decent ways toward others, because all of us deserve at least that little in this world.

Something goes amiss, though, in Stewart's tale of a small-town election that catches the eyes and the national ambitions of strategists from the country's two major political parties. The movie has something to say, about how money and influence can corrupt even the smallest, most basic, and most straightforward of political procedures—in this case, the mayoral election in an old-fashioned town in Wisconsin.

That message, which seems so obvious and optimistic near the story's start, becomes bogged down by Stewart's desire to make a gag of anything and everything. By the time the filmmaker gets making the point, the movie has morphed into such a broad, parody version of the political landscape that any form of sincerity or subtlety has been abandoned.

With the 2016 presidential election in the books, Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell), a long-time strategist for the Democratic National Committee out of Washington, D.C., is focusing on the forthcoming midterm elections. A staff member draws his attention to a video that has gone viral online. Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), a retired colonel from the U.S. Marines, made an impassioned speech about immigrants' rights and social welfare programs at a local town hall meeting in (the fictional) Deerlaken, Wisconsin. In that man, Gary sees an opportunity—a person who appeals to Democrats for what he says and to Republicans for who he is.

At first, all of this is pretty simple, and with that simplicity, there comes some earnestness of intent, as well as some pointed satire that only gently pokes its targets. The prodding is mostly aimed at a Gary, whose attempts to come across as less elite and fit in with rural America consistently fail—a fact unrecognized by him. After some sales-pitching and a seemingly genuine appeal to Jack's desire to help his town, Gary convinces the retired colonel to run for mayor. Jack has one condition: that Gary leads the campaign.

With this setup, the movie seems to be moving in the direction of more hopefulness in the politics of thoughtful virtue and more good-natured ribbing at the expense of out-of-touch, cynical political operatives like Gary. Indeed, Stewart introduces a Republican strategist named Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne), who comes into town to run the campaign of the incumbent mayor. While Gary is dim about the ways and concerns of rural Americans, Faith is a mendacious player (At one point, she says she's from the town and doesn't know why she said). They heap obscene insults at each other, while trying to explain why political action committees are allowed to operate in a campaign office, as long as they stay in the corner and only talk business with campaign staff after-hours.

Stewart tries to do two things here: present the facts—about the strategy and tools of campaigning and fundraising—in a straightforward, comprehensible manner and amplify the inherent absurdity of these facts. These two concept might seem of a piece, especially if the ultimate goal is satire, but Stewart's approach feels conflicted.

There are the legitimate concerns, put forth in scenes dissecting the processes of polling and questionable information-gathering, as well as during a campaign fundraiser in New York City, where Jack calls out the inanity of him trying to get money for a local election in an entirely different state. Then, there are the gags, using those concerns to present warped variations of reality (The new media—left, right, and neutral—are pummeled as either brainless cheerleaders or opportunistic enablers of the political divide) and at least one odd grotesquery, in the form of a billionaire who has become more machine than man.

If there's one consistency here, it's Stewart's apparent need to shout his real worries and his comedic aims from the rooftops. The jokes are some combination of crude, broad, and forced. The polemics about the way things are in politics, the media, and the campaign system are voiced repeatedly, never more plainly than during the story's denouement, just after the revelation of the plot's big twist (While a potentially clever premise for a different version of this story, it just adds another level of confused purpose here), and the credits (Stewart's interview with a former government official, which turns into the filmmaker stating the movie's thesis).

From both a political and a comedic perspective, Stewart's intentions with Irresistible are probably pure. His approach, though, constantly undermines whatever point, either political or comedic, he's trying to make.

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