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Alright, so let me just confess right off the bat that perhaps against my better judgment and sense of decorum, I laughed A LOT during this movie. Yes, it’s pretty base, and yes, it goes straight for the scrotum, but the way in which Zach Galifiankis makes the humor work really went over well with my funny bone.
Galifiankis plays Marty Huggins (even the name makes me laugh), a simple, perennially cheerful, and admittedly effete family man who decides to run for local congressional office just to spite a bully. His opponent is the establishment guy Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) who is as douche baggy a guy you can possibly imagine in existence. He doesn’t come from the Tea Party: he comes from the Teat Party of North Carolina, where he serves as the eternal provider of backwoods nourishment to his constituents that frankly don’t (and probably can’t) know better.
Enter the two campaign managers that promise to make this a race to remember: there’s Mitch (Jason Sudekis) who works for Cam and Tim Wattley (the criminally handsome Dylan McDermott) who works for Marty Higgins. The two campaign managers bring the race to a dead heat before election day until the you-know-what REALLY hits the ceiling fan. The climax is crazy, sick, kooky, and more. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it.
The best and biggest laughs belong in the first half of the film – whether or not you enjoy the second half’s antics will depend upon your predilection for Will Ferrell’s brand of juvenile humor. To be honest, his shtick is getting kind of old now that he’s pushing 50. There has to be something out there that’s just as funny as watching grown men behave like toddlers throwing tantrums, but Ferrell does make an attempt to make this movie slightly (and I mean very slightly) more urbane.
Ferrell is his usual middle aged brat self, but Galifiankis really owns the film. He plays Marty as a man who is everything he shouldn’t be: ambitious when he has no talent, married with kids when he’s probably gay, and full of sincere honesty when he’s really just a self-deluded opportunist. Sarah Palin would be proud.
No.
This movie sounds like an incredible waste of time and money. Sarah Palin would be a vast improvement.