Shawn's Swing Vote Review

2008 Movie #154 - Swing Vote

Swing Vote is another movie I was sure I was going to miss this year. I did get the chance to get watch it after all and unlike American Carol, at least this one wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Although far fetched, I was somewhat into the whole idea of this movie. Yea the idea of an entire election coming down to one person is pretty fucking ridiculous, but so are most movie plots. Therefore I was kind of into it. The movie did get a little preachy at times about how it’s our civic duty to vote and all that but it was an election year so I can almost forgive it. Plus coming off American Carol, it’s not nearly as go America go as that one so that helped too.

Having said that I kind of liked the idea of the movie, I should say that the movie itself is still not that great. It reminded me a lot of, of all fucking movies, Welcome to Mooseport. Both are 2 hour movies with election themes, that are intended to be comedies but don’t seem to contain a whole lot of comedy. Granted this one is supposed to also be a drama, and some of those moments work better, but the movie never quite succeeds as either a comedy or a drama. Though I have to admit I was entertained by the campaign commercials the candidates did that were designed to appeal to just one guy. Those were actually pretty funny and I was kind of hoping for more of them since the rest of the movie pales in comparison.

It’s also weird this movie also had both Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammer, as did American Carol. They must have been all fucking about America this year. At least I can understand a little more why they would choose to do this movie. Kevin Costner’s role isn’t much of a stretch for him but he does fine and makes the character likable when he probably shouldn’t be. I can’t decide my thoughts on the character of his daughter. I think the actress did a really good job but I was constantly going back and forth on whether or not I actually liked her character.

Swing Vote isn’t bad, but it’s easily forgettable. It’s not that funny aside from a few moments here and there, and the drama never quite works either. I was interested though because I sort of liked the idea behind the whole thing and was curious how it would all turn out. One last thing, the movie is a little too long.

**/5