Comedies don’t have to be deep or even cinematic. The only reason you pay ten bucks to see it in the theater is to choke on your popcorn from laughing so hard. So how would The Campaign rank on my laughter meter? Pretty dang high, provided that I had a friend to laugh with, but my overall rank in the whole scheme of things? I should have waited for it to come out on DVD.
The Campaign is a comedy involving two candidates running against each other to represent South Carolina in the senate. It’s your basic plot, nothing too spectacular, but hey, I’m not asking for the next Inception. You have Cam, the undefeated candidate for the past four elections, and Murphy, the underdog who probably couldn’t even name the candidates for this year’s presidential elections. They are a pretty good foil—the morally bankrupt, tall, successfulCam vs. the short, awkward, devoted Christian Murphy. These differences play a big role in the comedic values, but that is pushed out of the spotlight by the real ‘comedic’ portions that landed this movie an R-rating, the crude jokes.
I don’t know what is school appropriate, but let’s just say I can’t repeat any of the funny bits with out offending people who read this. Many of the jokes involved sexual innuendo, and the few that were about politics didn’t have the rest of the theater laughing as much asCam’s trash talking and yo mama jokes. It’s crude humor, so if you’re one of those people who have Comedy Central blocked on your T.V., stick toAmerica’s Funniest Home Videos for your cheap laughs.
Over all, it made me and my friend laugh, and it had a pretty good moral and a stereotypical storyline. (Spoiler alert, the underdog comes out on top.) But the parts that weren’t questioning the integrity of the candidates’ mothers really focused on how these people were morphing their lives just to fit in to the public eye. Murphy had a perfect family but loses it once he gets caught up in the scheme of politics.
All in all, it was funny, and that’s all it needs to sell tickets. And if you squint, you can see the message in between the Yo Mama jokes and the baby punching. After being inundated with the Democratic and Republican election hooplah, you might confuse comedy with reality.
