IRRESISTIBLE (Jon Stewart). 101 minutes. Available to rent on all digital platforms Friday (June 26). Rating: NN
A critic probably isn’t supposed to say stuff like this, but I was in the tank for Irresistible.
I mean, how could I not be? A comedy about contemporary American politics written and directed by Jon Stewart, whose version of The Daily Show devoted itself to the cynical posturing and imagecraft that shaped the discourse in the age of Bush II and Obama? And starring Stewart’s old pal Steve Carell, whose comic persona was shaped by their years working together? And featuring Rose Byrne, who’s almost always the best thing about the comedies she’s in?
Bring it, I said. And he did. And it’s really lame.
Stewart’s first feature since the 2014 political-prisoner docudrama Rosewater finds him back in his comfort zone of politically tinged comedy, with Steve Carell playing Gary Zimmer, a disillusioned Democratic strategist who travels to a conservative Wisconsin town to run the mayoral campaign of retired colonel Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), whose values skew closer to the left than the right.
He says nice things about immigrants and the poor, but his military cred and family-values bona fides are unimpeachable, so he’s clearly the unicorn the Democrats are seeking to draw red-staters looking for a reason to leave a party corrupted by its embrace of Donald Trump. Why wouldn’t he run as a Democrat?
It’s a setup Preston Sturges would have loved – though I’m sure he would have told it from the perspective of the townspeople whose pleasant world is invaded by the calculating city slicker. But Stewart’s a city slicker himself, meaning his sympathies are with Carell. Irresistible follows the uprooted elitist as he comes to appreciate the values of the heartland while battling the soulless Republican strategist (Byrne) the GOP parachutes in to back the incumbent (Brent Sexton).
There are endless cheap shots at the technobabble of pollsters and the gawping obeisance of cable-news journalists to party messaging. The wonderful Mackenzie Davis hovers on the periphery as Hastings’s savvy daughter Diana, who may or may not be trying to catch Gary’s eye. And the way Stewart handles the essential imbalance of their relationship says a lot about where his movie is ultimately going, which is straight into a conceptual brick wall.
Irresistible completely falls apart in its final movement, which depends on a big reveal that’s supposed to be shocking, but just doesn’t work at all. I suspect there’s a draft of the script somewhere that didn’t even hide what the movie’s really about, and makes a lot more sense both emotionally and structurally. And honestly, it would have to, because the way Stewart tries to retroactively explain the thing – which grows out of the same mushy-middle, we’re-not-so-different impulse as his Rally To Restore Sanity, but now feels just crushingly out of touch – just makes it all seem even more foolish. (I found myself grateful to have watched the movie at home, because I didn’t feel bad about yelling back at the screen when the big twist dropped.)
Anyway. I’m very disappointed. Sturges would be too. Go find Sullivan’s Travels and Hail The Conquering Hero instead they both do a far better job of telling this sort of story than Irresistible does. And you won’t get angry at anyone.
@normwilner
