Rating:

Moviegoers in search of political satire have had a rough time these past few years, as Hollywood has backed away from the genre due to America’s contentiously divided electorate. Sure, the electorate has always been divided, but rarely with as much venom and animosity as we have seen in the 2000 era.

It’s not so much about policy or government anymore as it is about culture. Pickup trucks vs. Hybrids, Beer vs. Lattes — we see these divisions everywhere in America, and once you make politics personal, some are easily offended.

Enter Bud Johnson, the pickup-driving, beer-swilling underachiever who doesn’t much care about anything. Hollywood has put it’s faith in him, thinking that perhaps his story can ease some of America’s political pain.

Bud is played by Kevin Costner, who hasn’t been as funny and charming as he is in Swing Vote for decades. Only his performance in Field of Dreams compares in terms of downright likability — and we do like him. Costner’s Bud doesn’t care about his job, his friends, or even his (broken) family, all that’s left of which is his adorable little daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll), but we somehow manage to care about him.

Maybe it’s the pure bipartisanship of his apathy, but his “loser” ways are completely endearing. And his delightful daughter is, of course, his polar opposite: hyperinvolved and ultrapassionate about not just politics, but civics, the economy, the world. It’s because of this that she registers Bud to vote, frustrated by his acerbic lack of interest in the election, and thus seals his fate.

Through a voting error, Bud’s vote ends up not being recorded — but they do know that he voted. And after the electoral college results in a tie, the world is waiting on one little county in New Mexico to decide the next President of the United States: Bud’s county. Then, Bud’s county results in a tie, leaving only one option — Bud must recast his vote, and decide who will lead the free world.

Sure, it’s unlikely. But consider that the 2000 election was decided by fewer than 600 votes in Florida. In New Mexico, it was just over 100 votes that decided the state. Unlikely, but not impossible.

What results is a media and political maelstrom swirling around Bud’s life as he prepares to cast his vote. And so begins the satire-fest. Everyone wants to know what he’ll decide.

The media hounds him for any tiny soundbyte or opinion that might be a clue as to how he’ll vote — blowing everything he says monumentally out of proportion. The politicians react, campaigning directly at him, and selling their political souls in the process. Republican candidate Kelsey Grammar endorses gay marriage after Bud says he doesn’t care what two grown men do on their own time. Democratic candidate Dennis Hopper rails against abortion when Bud says that he doesn’t like it.

In this way, and through some very clever and hilarious faux-campaign commercials, the movie lays bare our political process for what it is: one, long, media-obsessed popularity contest, with voter manipulation and false-choice gimmickry as the orders of the day. And not only does it make politicians lie, the movie teaches us, but it also makes regular people believe in the wrong sorts of things for the wrong sorts of reasons.

But the film is also bipartisan, and bends over backwards to prove that it’s not lobbying for any one side over the other. While that might be it’s greatest strength at the box office, it’s also its greatest weakness in terms of effective satire. Without a clear target on which to train its sarcasm, the film ends up targeting politics, the media, and America as a whole, and that sarcasm essentially turns into cynicism.

As politicians are made to be stupid, self-important fools, and the media portrayed as cutthroat and unprincipled, the movie takes on the same air of arrogant apathy that Bud was displaying at the outset of the movie As a result, as he learns to care about “the system,” the audience is duped into disliking it more and more.

But, in the end, the film is not about political satire, and that’s why so many political wonks are finding it to be callow and dissatisfying cinema. I never got the impression that politics was the objective, though. The objective, clearly, was about having hope for the future, and doing what you can to make that future better.

Sure, it’s gushy. But so was Sex in the City, and at least this movie has a point.