'Swing Vote' review

Kevin Costner in "Swing Vote" (Credit: Ben Glass/Disney)

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An election day malfunction causes the U.S. Presidential race to come down to the vote of blue-collar screw-up Bud (Kevin Costner) in the tiny town of Texico, New Mexico. Both the Republican (Kelsey Grammer) and Democratic (Dennis Hopper) candidates immediately begin lobbying him personally, while a local reporter (Paula Patton) sees a chance to make a name for herself and Bud’s 12-going-on-40 year-old daughter (annoyingly precocious Madeline Carroll) tries to keep her dad from embarrassing himself.

Big question: How does a simple, easygoing and well-intentioned Disney comedy turn out to be one of the worst movies of the year?

Skip it: Yes, the premise is totally ludicrous, but the movie's problems are deeper and far more troubling than that. It’s not enough that writer-director Joshua Michael Stern’s idea of satire is concocting absurd situations to make an obvious point about how quickly politicians will abandon their core values for a vote (The Republican candidate supports the environment and gay marriage! The Democrat endorses abortion and takes a stand against illegal immigration! How edgy!). The filmmakers have their own agenda to send the audience home happy without things getting too complicated, so when the three heroes face a massive moral challenge and do exactly the wrong thing, their decision is glossed over in a noxious haze of sentimentality.

Catch it: For reassurance that Bill Maher actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to politics. He briefly appears as himself, declaring Bud a "dumbass" during an episode of his HBO show "Real Time." It's the only time that someone on screen makes any sense.

Bottom line: One of the most idiotic movies about the American political process ever made, “Swing Vote” strives for a feel-good Capra-esque human comedy celebrating how even the vote of a politically disengaged fool counts for something in our system. But the movie, through its own narrative laziness and incompetence, creates a situation in which Bud literally should not be voting and winds up delivering a haphazard endorsement of voter fraud. That's a daring message for George W. Bush's America, but almost definitely not an intentional one.

Bonus: To give you just a taste of the movie’s humor: George Lopez has a thoroughly irritating supporting turn as a local news producer and delivers the line “With that information and a dollar I could buy myself a chalupa!”

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