Welcome to A-Z Movie Reviews. Every Sunday, for the next several months, I will be posting a review of a film in my home movie collection. How it works is, I will be reviewing movies in alphabetical order until I get to the letter Z (Yes, I do have a film that ends in Z). Now I realize there are many ways to alphabetize a film collection, but this is mine so don’t judge me. This is simply for fun.
Before we get into this installment of A-Z Movie Reviews, let me just say I apologize in advance. The film we’re talking about is Election. The reason I am apologizing is because I know we are all on election overload. The Presidential election and the aftermath has left us drained beyond measure and I know the last thing you want to hear about is a film about an election.
We are now on the letter “E” and Election just happened to be the first film in my collection with the letter “E.” Fear not though, because this film isn’t a downer, it’s actually a comedy and it’s about a high school election.
What it’s about:
A high school teacher meets his match in an over-achieving student politician.
Reese Witherspoon’s character Tracy Flick is indeed an overachiever and is used to getting everything she wants and, what she wants now is to be the student body president. There’s just one problem; her Civics teacher Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick). Mr. McAllister can’t stand Tracy and he wants to do everything in his power to stop her from winning the election.
He enlists the unsuspecting school jock/popular guy Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against her. Tracy isn’t an idiot though, and she knows what Mr. McAllister is up to, but she refuses to back down. The race is an intense one and on election day, things get a bit interesting.
Mr. McAllister teaches a course that involves morals and ethics, yet he does something that is the complete opposite of what his class stands for. Tracy is the true winner of the election but, Mr. McAllister rigs it by throwing two of her votes into the trash. This of course doesn’t end well because the truth always comes out.
I really enjoy this film because although it makes you laugh, it makes you think about the corruption that surrounds elections even in high school. If you’re suffering from election fatigue, this movie will be the break you need.
Election is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and you can watch it for free on Pluto TV.
