The Campaign Review

Can Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakas achieve poll position with their latest comedy?
Coming off the back of comedy hit films such as Anchorman, The Hangover and Step Brothers, you wouldn't blame Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakas for becoming just a tad complacent about their chances with their latest movie outing, The Campaign. Sadly, though, that's exactly what's happened here, and while complacency can sometimes be justified, too often it breeds a strange contempt for the viewer that will backfire 99% of the time. Indeed, there's a real sense that these two legendary comics were trying just that little too hard to have the viewer laughing, sacrificing narrative integrity and general likeability of their production as a result.

The central premise of this uninspired flick is as such- two potential Congressmen launch equally absurd election campaigns in order to best one another, including paintball violence, baby-punching and terrorist allusions in their marketing to spite their opponent. If all this sounds like a rather exaggerated and hyperbolic form of satire towards the Presidential elections the film was not-so-coincidentally released to coincide with, then you're a wiser viewer than the writers clearly take you for. It seems that the script feels the viewer is below the status of holding the intelligence to recognise when a movie is simply playing on its gimmicks for the sake of gags rather than any meaningful storyline.

Sure enough, the gags wear thin after the first half hour or so, likely only to attain as much as chuckles (and that's from the more generous viewer) in the remaining 60 minutes of its running time. Even Galifinakas and Ferrell appear to lose the will a little as the storyline progresses, seemingly realising for themselves how turgid and plain crass some of the jokes become towards the end and perhaps questioning the need to do much more given that the flick was virtually guaranteed to pull in the cash they'd hoped for. When such an attribute becomes clear as present in the central cast, it's not a good omen, and indeed The Campaign descends fairly rapidly into the pool of forgotten mishaps that won't be remembered with any fondness from comedy fans.

There's fun to be had here, sure, and I have no doubt that fans of Ferrell and his Hangover co-star like myself will at least get some enjoyment out of seeing this rather iconic duo of comics team up to take the reins for a single motion picture. Nevertheless, the novelty wears off, and before you know it, you'll find that The Campaign becomes a chore to watch, a prolonged 90 minute joke that should have been cut off by one of the production team in the early stages of screenplay writing while they still had the chance. Better luck at the next ballot, Warner Brothers...
2.5/5