The Campaign
Cam Brady (Will Ferrell, Everything Must Go) is comfortably running unopposed for his seat as North Carolina congressman, until two prominent businessmen, the Motch brothers (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd), decide they want a politican they can easily control. They convince Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis, The Hangover Part II), whose father was a politician, to run against Brady. The Motch brothers have big plans for the district, and they think that Huggins will let them have their way. Cam Brady is not used to having competition, and he decides to give it his all in order to beat Huggins, a strange man with a strange family, so that he can maintain his place in Congress.
I'd like to know if any of The Campaign was improvised, because Ferrell and Galifianakis had great chemistry together. Although Galifianakis played a character similar to the ones he played in Due Date and the two Hangover movies, he made Marty Huggins his own. The two leads are joined by their equally hilarious campaign managers, Dylan McDermott (TV's American Horror Story) on Brady's side, and Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses) on Ferrell's side.
Yes, see this film. Although the laughs peter out by the end, the first half or 2/3 of it is quite hilarious, and for some reason there are also a lot of Price is Right references which I loved too. There are obvious allusions to real events here - in one scene, Galifianakis's character shoots Ferrell's character on a "hunting trip" (think the Dick Cheney incident) and his popularity in the polls actually goes up - and a lot of poking fun at the ridiculousness of politicians and politics overall. I didn't completely buy the ending, where Ferrell's character suddenly has morals, but the film is definitely worth seeing for the laughs and jokes sprinkled throughout.
The Campaign is in theaters today, August 10th, and is rated R with a runtime of 85 minutes. 3 stars out of 5.
