Wooing the Deplorables

A Review of "Irresistible"

What the turmoil of the 2016 presidential election revealed more than anything is how jaded and corrupt the American "political process" is. From campaign antics (remember Donald Trump, accused of sexual harassment, on stage with all the women who had ever accused Bill Clinton?) and post-election disbelief and riots, to the media's consequent fascination with the idea that somehow Russia was responsible for Trump's victory, what became apparent is how little respect the political elite has for Middle America.

In Irresistible, writer and director Jon Stewart satirizes American elections, to good effect. The main character, Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell), is a Democrat political strategist whom we meet after his candidate suffers a resounding defeat in 2016. Still reeling, Gary sees a YouTube video of retired Marine Colonel Jack Hastings defending "undocumented workers" at a town meeting in his conservative Wisconsin home of Deerlaken. Convinced that Col. Hastings might be the key to winning over Republicans in Middle America, Gary flies to Deerlaken and convinces him to run for mayor.

Gary's plans seem to hit an obstacle when Republican political strategist Faith Brewster shows up in Deerlaken, but we quickly learn that Faith's presence was part of Gary's plan all along. He wants this little local election to take center stage in the national media, and so to win back the Heartland for the Democrats. It soon becomes apparent that the Hastings campaign needs more money than anyone in little Deerlaken has in his checking account, so Gary flies the colonel to an elite fundraising party in New York. There, the colonel tells the party's hosts how crazy it is that they care about a little Podunk town in Wisconsin—and in admiration of his "authenticity," the fakey New Yorkers open their checkbooks.

Indeed, the checks are a main feature of this film. A couple of scenes depict individual checks and the vast amounts of money being poured into this race—$5,000, $25,000, $125,000. With the extra funds, Gary hires his "A-Team" political strategists, who analyze local data to ensure victory. But the A-Team is equally out of touch with these particular constituents; for example, at one point they identify a Deerlaken neighborhood with a highly concentrated cluster of "single women" and decide to send these women brochures on how Hastings will protect their access to contraception. The single women, it turns out, are nuns, and they're none too happy about the targeted ads.

The film gets off to a slow start—the first few lines are stale and awkward, leaving the viewer wondering if this is one of those films where all the good lines are already packed into the trailer. But as it gets going, Irresistible picks up steam, becoming funny enough to overcome a few bad lines here and there. The point of the film is to make the audience ponder the way we elect our officials, and to realize how much "spin" there really is in the process. As Brewster and Zimmer tell hordes of cameras at the very beginning: they lie, the media know they lie, and yet, here they are—at the center of a media circus. No one even seems shaken by the lying. The film closes with a plot twist that's almost as unexpected as the outcome of the real 2016 election, but that also emphasizes some genuine and serious shortcomings with the electoral process.

Irresistible merits its R rating for language, including sexually explicit language. Zimmer and Brewster are an on-again, off-again couple, and they continually make pretty nasty sexual remarks to each other. But even here, the remarks have a purpose—to reveal the soullessness of the American political elite, and to point out how very different its members are from most other Americans.

As Jack Hastings' daughter Diana tells Zimmer toward the end of the film, "This system, the way we elect people, it's terrifying. And exhausting. And I think it's driving us all insane."

It's hard to argue with that.