The movie is full of funny scenes. One of the scenes that is most amusing has Governor Stanton (Travolta) and his staff sitting around an over-sized table at a familiar Southern barbecue joint, slopping down chicken and ribs and bottles of beer. The governor, the black barbecue owner, and the campaign strategist (Thornton), are trading stories about their Mammas. "My Mamma had diabetes." "My Mamma never had a nickel." It's a subtle contest in which the conversants one-up one another while exchanging sympathies that are at least half genuine. Thornton wins. He gets uncertainly to his feet, slams his chair down, and cries, "My mamma raised SEVEN of us kids and worked her fingers to the bone doin' it. Now they're cuttin' her up, piece by piece!" He begins weeping. The others gather round him and give him a group hug and they sing, "You Are My Sunshine" (written by a Southern governor, claims Travolta), and Stanton's wife (Thomson) feeds him tissues to sob into. It's late at night and the newly awakened hound dogs howl along with the singing.
The whole first half of the movie is more or less that way, an outrageous ripoff of Clinton and his amateurs and friends during the 1992 primary race with lots of jokes and lovable characters.
"Your Mamma still with you?" the teary barbecue owner asks one of the governor's staff during the sob fest? The new man, who hasn't been listening, looks up and answers distractedly, "No, she lives in Beverley Hills with her second husband." The middle third of the movie turns more serious, with some major challenges to Travolta's continuing momentum. Did he really impregnate the barbecue owner's pretty young daughter? We don't find out but the suggestion is that COULD have. Is Travolta going to have to "go negative" in his ads, as his opponents have done? We can be forgiven, I think, if we find these issues a little naive these days.
The final third of the movie, in my view, fails. The director, Mike Nichols, is extremely efficient and very sensitive to details of scene and character, but he has a tendency to take a funny movie and make it "serious" by giving it a downbeat or even tragic ending. It's as if the Chicago gangsters had finally caught Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis at the end of "Some Like it Hot" and gunned them down in an alley. Instead of a skillful mixture of comedy and drama we wind up with a movie that's been cut up -- piece by piece -- into two big pieces.
Aside from the structure itself, this particular tragedy doesn't work. A manic lesbian (Kathy Bates) is called in to do her usual job of digging up dirt on the opposition. She's energetic, earthy, and likable. And when she feels betrayed by Governor Stanton she kills herself. A person who is a professional cynic finds she can't live after her illusions about her boss are shattered. Then there is a kind of anti-climax involving a retired governor who becomes a public figure by -- well, never mind. I got a little lost somewhere along in here. A gay man dying of AIDS in a hospice.
Well, the laughs disappear, but not to be replaced by thought, only by emotions easily elicited by the pushing of certain buttons. You may tear up, but you don't think, "What a tragedy." You think, "Gee, that's too bad." Meanwhile the movie, overburdened by its own weight, wobbles on to its end. It's cleverly written by Elaine May and done well by everyone involved, but, gee, that's too bad. What is wrong with a straight comedy? What is it, some kind of disease? Does a worthwhile movie NEED to be "about something"? Even Bill Shakespeare wrote silly and amusing plays.
The whole first half of the movie is more or less that way, an outrageous ripoff of Clinton and his amateurs and friends during the 1992 primary race with lots of jokes and lovable characters.
"Your Mamma still with you?" the teary barbecue owner asks one of the governor's staff during the sob fest? The new man, who hasn't been listening, looks up and answers distractedly, "No, she lives in Beverley Hills with her second husband." The middle third of the movie turns more serious, with some major challenges to Travolta's continuing momentum. Did he really impregnate the barbecue owner's pretty young daughter? We don't find out but the suggestion is that COULD have. Is Travolta going to have to "go negative" in his ads, as his opponents have done? We can be forgiven, I think, if we find these issues a little naive these days.
The final third of the movie, in my view, fails. The director, Mike Nichols, is extremely efficient and very sensitive to details of scene and character, but he has a tendency to take a funny movie and make it "serious" by giving it a downbeat or even tragic ending. It's as if the Chicago gangsters had finally caught Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis at the end of "Some Like it Hot" and gunned them down in an alley. Instead of a skillful mixture of comedy and drama we wind up with a movie that's been cut up -- piece by piece -- into two big pieces.
Aside from the structure itself, this particular tragedy doesn't work. A manic lesbian (Kathy Bates) is called in to do her usual job of digging up dirt on the opposition. She's energetic, earthy, and likable. And when she feels betrayed by Governor Stanton she kills herself. A person who is a professional cynic finds she can't live after her illusions about her boss are shattered. Then there is a kind of anti-climax involving a retired governor who becomes a public figure by -- well, never mind. I got a little lost somewhere along in here. A gay man dying of AIDS in a hospice.
Well, the laughs disappear, but not to be replaced by thought, only by emotions easily elicited by the pushing of certain buttons. You may tear up, but you don't think, "What a tragedy." You think, "Gee, that's too bad." Meanwhile the movie, overburdened by its own weight, wobbles on to its end. It's cleverly written by Elaine May and done well by everyone involved, but, gee, that's too bad. What is wrong with a straight comedy? What is it, some kind of disease? Does a worthwhile movie NEED to be "about something"? Even Bill Shakespeare wrote silly and amusing plays.