Originally Posted on August 8th, 2012, at Playeraffinity.com

It's an election year, which means the time has come to devote a great deal of thought and energy into analyzing the foundations of democracy, with roughly 2 percent of said discussion actually being serious or thoughtful. You don't have to be the DJ3000 to realize that when it comes to politics, sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying, especially at a time when the values we should be celebrating get buried in the fracas of a 24-hour news cycle, that highlights gaffs and attack ads instead of platforms.

But that's all good news for the estate of comedy, as some of the best films out there revel in taking the piss out of the democratic process. Whether lampooning government at the district level, like this week's The Campaign, or targeting the national halls of power, this list of political spoofs and send-ups is guaranteed to make you laugh at how eerily accurate the satire is… then sigh dejectedly at how eerily accurate the satire is.

8) Idiocracy

Mike Judge's barely released cult favorite takes the feeling of being the smartest guy in the room and runs with it to a horrifying extreme, when a cryogenically frozen army schmoe awakens in 2505 to find that proliferation of stupidity has decimated the world's collective IQ. In a world where the language is a sub-Xbox Live mix of grunting and sexual pejoratives, and the biggest TV show is called "Ow! My Balls!", it's easy to overlook Judge's gentle commentary on growing anti-intellectualism and corporate ownership, even if evolving Starbucks into a futuristic sex parlor seems less satirical every time someone mentions the chain by name.

Cynical Soundbite: "You think Einstein walked around thinking everyone was a bunch of dumb shits? Now you know why he built that bomb."

7) Election

Is it possible to take the electoral process seriously when your introduction to it is so utterly pointless? The candidates running for class president in Alexander Payne's Election are a cross section of the exact sorts of schemers and idiots that dominate the political landscape more than seems likely. There's the insanely driven overachiever willing to do anything to get ahead, a popular golden boy who's dumber than a sack of hammers, and a fringe candidate who inspires voters by telling them not to vote. When dastardly plots are made and lives are ruined for the sake of one meaningless election, imagine the kind of damage a real one could do.

Cynical Soundbite: "We all know it doesn't matter who gets elected president of Carver. Do you really think it's going to change anything around here? Make one single person smarter or happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the one who gets elected."

6) Thank You for Smoking

Dealing more with the importance of spin in politics than the process itself, Jason Reitman's directorial debut is a gleefully transgressive love letter to the most indefensible groups out there: giant corporations and the lobbyists embodying them. Led by Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, the self-described Colonel Sanders of nicotine, Thank You For Smoking lays waste to all players in the game of media control, from Hollywood and advertisers, to crusading elected officials. It takes the stance of a magnetic know-it-all that knows how to thumb its nose at the system it's exploiting, and look damn good doing it. Although there's a sweetness beneath all the self-interested rationalizing, rarely does such dark wit come in package so slick and entertaining.

Cynical Soundbite: "I get paid to talk. I don't have an MD or law degree. I have a baccalaureate in kicking ass and taking names. You know that guy who can pick up any girl? I'm him. On crack."

5) Duck Soup

The kind of farce that only the Marx Brothers could have mustered, Duck Soup launches of a war of words and vaudevillian buffoonery, before starting a real one between bankrupt Freedonia and conniving neighbor state Sylvania. Groucho leads as Freedonian despot Rufus T. Firefly, who's too busy playing the court jester to bother with anything that resembles good governing. Despite Groucho's own admission that the film was intended to evoke laughter instead of discourse, Duck Soup has garnered increasing respect for its take on fascism in WWII-era Europe, the feather in its cap being an outright ban from viewing in Mussolini's Italy.

Cynical Soundbite: "I wanted to get a writ of habeas corpus but I should have gotten a-rid of you instead."

4) Wag the Dog

This pitch black satire scores points for its astounding prescience, telling the tale of a political propaganda expert who starts a phoney war with Albania to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal. Its release in late 1997 was barely a month prior to Bill Clinton ordering bombings on terrorist bases in Afghanistan, which came just three days after Clinton confessed that he was the one who had dealt that which had been spelt on an item in Monica Lewinsky's wardrobe. Immaculate timing aside, Wag the Dog features Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in top form, each playing one half of the increasingly incestuous relationship shared by the government and Hollywood.

Cynical Soundbite: "The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst, perhaps, to their own governments, have blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you've got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert."

3) The Great Dictator

A "prince and pauper" story that trades the street urchin for a forgetful tramp, and royalty for a snivelling tyrant, Charlie Chaplin's first talkie is considered a standout even in a career as illustrious as his. With the duel role as both an amnesiac Jewish barber and the gibberish spouting dictator Hynkel, Chaplin's thinly veiled mockery of life in Nazi Germany starts off like your typical silent-era slapstick, but quickly ramps up to be an audacious condemnation of fascist Europe, much of which was written before the outbreak of World War II. As if more aware than most of the future horrors the Nazi party would unleash upon the world, Chaplin ends the film using the advent of talking pictures to its fullest potential, delivering one of the greatest and most moving speeches ever recorded on film.

Cynical Soundbite: Just watch the speech. It'll pretty much wipe out whatever cynicism you're feeling.

2) In The Loop

Certainly among the foulest comedies of the last decade, and perhaps the best full stop, In the Loop is a head-spinner of rapid-fire threats and miscommunication between British and American officials, in which a decision to go to war is as much about what isn't said, as what is. For as furiously as the characters will throw out political acronyms and intricate insults, simple human stupidity, greed and vanity are the real forces driving a political machine that keeps those ostensibly running it either a few steps behind, or in danger of being chewed up underfoot should they get in the way. With a ferociously funny script that recalls Oscar Wilde after a bachelor party with the guys from South Park, never has the quagmire of modern politics been so dense, yet relatable at the same time.

Cynical Soundbite: "Okay. Firstly, don't raise your voice. This is a sacred place. Now, you may not believe that, and I may not believe that, but, by God, it's a useful hypocrisy."

1) Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

When the subject you're making light of is the very real possibility that humanity will destroy all life on earth using nuclear weapons, is is even possible to handle with care? Perhaps that's why Doctor Strangelove persists as one of the greatest comedies of all time, because it had the cajones to poke fun at the arms race barely a year after Kennedy and Kruschev nearly blew everyone up over some missile parking spots in Cuba.

With the film's superpowers run by guys named President Merkin Muffley and Premier Dimitri Kisov, and Slim Pickens starting armageddon with a bit of atomic rodeo, Doctor Strangelove can be Looney Tunes levels of zany. Underneath that, though, is the creeping fear that such a farcical end to the world doesn't seem all that crazy. It's equal parts terrifying and cathartic. While everyone else was holding their breath, watching the clock tick down to midnight, Stanley Kubrick and company decided to let out a big, noisy fart. If you're going to die anyway, might as well do it with a smile on your face.

Cynical Soundbite: "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

Seeing as they've been the biggest names in comedy for the better part of a decade now, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had to star in the same movie at some point. So why not now, at at time when political sensitivity is just starting to percolate, and we could all use a break before the real polarizing insanity begins? Their comedic styles practically read like a president/vice presidential ticket: Ferrell quarterbacks as the big gun leading the ensemble, while Galifianakis is the loveable oddball who shows up to support the headliner, if not outright upstage them. Putting these two together is like getting a licence to print money, so if anything, waiting to do a project about a no holds barred congressional seat race at the prime of its relevancy should only make this meeting of comic titans even more of a success.

So why is The Campaign so much less than the sum of all those hallmarks of a sure-fire hit? It's not as if director Jay Roach is unqualified for this sort of material. When he's not shooting R-rated comedies, he's busy making made-for-TV political movies on HBO. And The Campaign does deliver on the brand of jokes you've come to expect from both its stars, with Ferrell playing another inexplicably successful but barely contained man-child, and Galifianakis doing a variation on the preciously optimistic dimwit archetype he does so well, this time with some heinous sweaters and a pair of chinese pugs to keep him company.

The dominant issue might be that the story is designed to keep the pair apart as much as possible. The film opens with Ferrell's Cam Brady campaigning for reelection as a North Carolinian congressmen, even though all he's had to do in the past is just show up, having previously run unopposed. His platform is simple: America, Jesus, and freedom. When a misdialled phone number and a particularly salacious voice-mail land Brady in hot water, his corporate backers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) start looking for a replacement, which they find in Galifianakis' Marty Huggins, a small town businessman whose eccentricities can be easily confused for folksy charm.

With an opening quote from Ross Perot reminding viewers that, "politics has no rules," plans for a clean campaign are abandoned almost immediately by both parties, as Cam and Marty pander shamelessly while on camera, and orchestrate increasingly ruthless attacks against one another when off. With Ferrell and Galifianakis only interacting during debates and public events, it's the supporting cast they have to bounce of off when out of the public eye, including Brian Cox as the Huggins patriarch, and Jason Sudeikis as Brady's campaign manager. There's also Dylan McDermott as Sudeikis' Huggins-camp counter-part, though unless there's some secret inside joke at work here, giving his character the same name as the dentist from Seinfeld is just weird.

While the backup players do fine, The Campaign toooften feels like a series of missed opportunities. The breakouts for both leads (Anchorman and The Hangover) had stronger stories to tie together what were essentially sketch compilations featuring a very talented cast. Here though, the plot counts down to the all-important election without actually building toward it. It's practically one great big montage of scenarios and premises related to campaigning, interspersed with direct attacks and retaliations against one candidate or another, and the repetition grows more wearying every time The Campaign hits the same note of politicians doing anything to please voters.

Certain jokes in and of themselves work just fine. There's a kinda clever, kinda offensive take on the southern mammy stereotype that gets some good mileage. And accidentally punching a baby is just inherently funny, as is when they return to that gag, which is even funnier. But they're the few noteworthy jokes sprinkled into a script that relies too heavily on formula in the sketches: get some expletive-peppered exposition out of the way, then establish a gag where everyone can shout out escalating non sequiturs to see which one will be the scene ender. It's tiresome, and doesn't make the most of either the subject matter or the rating. Why bother getting an R when one of the biggest laugh lines comes from an insult that was safe enough to be used on 30 Rock years ago.

The hit or miss humour would be more acceptable if there were something else to fall back on, but as satire, The Campaign is mostly toothless. The only real political sentiment is the broad acknowledgement that big money has become the real source of electoral power, and the evil industrialists pulling everyone's strings are called the Motch brothers, so if you've seen Wisconsin in the news in the last year, you get the joke. Their villainous plan to construct a child labour factory in the heart of North Carolina is a little at odds with the frequent product placement for Apple, with the message becoming less like "child labour is bad," and more like "child labour is bad so long as we're aware of it."

Though amusing in spurts, The Campaign doesn't convert enough of its huge potential into a memorable return, floating by on the strengths of its cast when it had the potential to soar. For a film that wants to idolize the positive change elections can have, The Campaign's inability to deliver fully on its own promise seems all too sourly familiar.

2 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2012, USA